Elementary Go Series - Vol 3 - Tesuji

Elementary Go Series, Volume 3
TESUJI
by James Davies
Kiseido Publishing Company
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Elementary Go Series, Vol. 3
TESUJI
by
James Davies

Tokyo, San Francisco, Amsterdam
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Published by
CPO Box 2126
Tokyo, Japan
Copyright © 1975 by
The Ishi Press, Inc. and James Davies
Copyright © 1995
by Kiseido Publishing Company and James Davies
All rights reserved according to international law. No part of

this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or
electronic process, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system,
transmitted or otherwise copied for public or private use without
the written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 4-87187-012-4
First Printing April 1975

Fifth Printing May 1995
Printed in Japan
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PREFACE
This book covers the elementary tactics of the game of go, apart
from those of life and death and of the endgame which have been saved
for other volumes. Problems, which the reader should try to solve as he
reads along, fill about half the pages. Most of them will yield to a direct
application of the ideas in the text, although in some of the problems at
the ends of the chapters the reader will be on his own.
I am indebted to Richard Bozulich and James Kerwin for contribut-
ing problems and examples and for proofreading, and in particular to
James Kerwin for making suggestions that led to the writing of chapter
one and the organization of the book in its present form.
Tokyo, January, 1975 James Davies
FOOTNOTE
It does not amount to a new edition, but in the first reprinting of this
book several proofreading slips, and two more subtle errors in the
problems (pagiT. 58 and 61) have been corrected. My thanks go to Mr.
Reinhp.rd Walther for bringing the latter to my attention.
August 1977 J. D.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Reading ............................................ 5
2. Capture the Cutting Stones............................ 14
3. Amputate the Cutting Stones.......................... 30
4. Ko................................................. 44
5. When Liberties Count ................................ 60
6. Linking Groups Together ............................. 90
7. Cutting Groups Apart ................................ 104
8. Into Enemy Territory................................. 114
9. Escape ............................................. 124
10. Sacrifice to Gain Tempo .............................. 132
11. Tesuji for Attack .................................... 140
12. How to Connect..................................... 154
13. Making Shape....................................... 164
14. Ignore the Atari ..................................... 182
15. Double-Threat Tesuji................................. 190
16. Challenge Problems .................................. 194
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1. READING
The problems in this book are almost all reading problems. They are
not going to tax your judgement by asking you to find the largest point
on the board, choose the direction of play, or ponder the relative merits
of profit and outer strength. Instead, they are going to ask you to work
out sequences of moves that capture, cut, link up, make good shape, or
accomplish some other clear tactical objective.
A good player tries to read out such tactical problems in his head
before he puts the stones on the board. He looks before he leaps.
Frequently he does not leap at all; many of the sequences his reading
uncovers are stored away for future reference, and in the end never
carried out. This is especially true in a professional game, where the two
hundred or so moves played are only the visible part of an iceberg of
implied threats and possibilities, most of which stays submerged. You
may try to approach the game at that level, or you may, like most of us,
think your way from one move to the next as you play along, but in
either case it is your reading ability more than anything else that
determines your rank.
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There is an element of natural talent involved, but for the most part
reading ability is developed through study and experience. As you
become familiar with various positions and shapes you will find certain
moves, called tesuji, that come up again and again, and once you learn
them your reading will become much faster and more accurate. There
are also certain habits of thinking to be acquired, which this chapter will
try to illustrate.
The first principle in reading is to start with a definite purpose. There
is no better way to waste time than to say to yourself, 'I wonder what
happens if I play here, and start tracing out sequences aimlessly. Tactics
musts serve strategy. Start by asking yourself what you would like to
accomplish in the position in question, then start hunting for the
sequence that accomplishes it. Once you have your goal clearly in mind
the right move, if it exists, will be much easier to find.
With the goal set, reading is a matter of working your way through a
mental tree diagram of possible moves. You should be systematic and
thorough. Start with the obvious move, followed by the obvious
counter-move, the obvious counter-move to that, and so on until you
have a sequence that ends in success for one side and failure for the
other. Then take the last move made by the side that failed and try other
possibilities. If they all fail too, go back to the same side's move before
that and do the same thing again. It is important to work from the back
toward the front of the sequence, to avoid leaving things out. Eventually
you will arrive at a conclusion, and hopefully it will be correct.
As an example, let us take the question of whether Black can cut off the
five white stones in the lower portion of Dia. 1. Both players want to
know the answer to this question, but let us imagine ourselves as Black
and follow his thought processes as he reads the problem out.
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Since he is trying to separate the two stones marked ⇓, the obvious
move to start with is 1 in Dia. 2. The obvious counter-move, White 2 in
Dia. 3, fails because of Black 3. Black 1 looks promising, but we must
consider other possible counter-moves by White.
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The next most obvious counter-move is White 2 in Dia. 4, which
aims at going over the black stone at a or under it at b. For Black 3 we
start by blocking White's path as in Dia. 5 and letting him cut. Black
gives atari at 5, White connects at 6, and Black is dead. Are there any
better possibilities for Black 5? No, so this Black 3 fails.
Next comes Black 3 in Dia. 6. After White links underneath Black has
what looks like a tesuji at 5, but it comes to nothing. This Black 3 fails
too.
By now Black may be ready to conclude that White 2 works, but he
still has other Black 3's to try. Sooner or later the hane at 3 in Dia. 7 is
going to come to light. This is a real tesuji, the eye-stealing tesuji, and if
you know it you probably spotted it immediately. It stops White from
linking up, and White cannot cut at a because of shortage of liberties,
(that is, he would be putting himself into atari). This is still true after
White 4 and Black 5; the white stones are cut off and dead.
So the White 2 we have been investigating in Dias. 4 to 7 turns out to be

a failure; that only means that other, less obvious White 2's have to be
tested. The next candidate might be the hane shown in
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Dia. 8.
If Black plays 3 in Dia. 9, White will connect at 4 and be threatening
to link up with either a or b. Black cannot defend against both of these
threats, so he has failed. In this kind of situation a and b are called miai;
if one player takes one of them, the other player can take the other.
Black 3 in Dia. 9 failed, but Black 3 in Dia. 10 succeeds. If White

cuts at 4, Black has a snap-back at 5; if White plays 4 at a, Black
captures at b; and if White connects at b, Black can play 4, 5, or a. This
eliminates the hane for White 2.
White's resources are fast disappearing, and we must now turn to
rather unlikely-looking choices, such as a, b, and even c in Dia. 11, for
White 2. Each of these, however, can quickly be eliminated. See if you
can find answers to them for yourself; only White a is at all tricky, (it
invites a mistake in which Black captures two of the white stones but
misses the rest).
If you have dealt with the moves in Dia. 11, then a total of six White
2's have been shown to fail. Does that mean that Black 1 is established?
Not yet, for there is one White 2 left, the least obvious and strongest
move of all.
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The last arrow in White's quiver is the one-point jump to the edge in
Dia. 12. It guards the cutting point at a and hence threatens to cut at b. If
White connects at 3 in Dia. 13, White can link up with 4, and Black 3 in
Dia. 14 runs into a move that we have seen before. These two Black 3's
are failures.
Boldness may succeed where caution fails, so next Black tries

blocking White's way directly with 3 in Dia. 15. At first, this seems to
work. White cannot cut at 4 in Dia. 16 because Black will cut him right
back with 5. Since 4 fails, there is no way White can get through to the
corner; he has put up a good fight, but it looks as if he has lost in the
end. Just to be on the safe side, however, Black had better doublecheck
for an alternative to White 4 in Dia. 16.
And sure enough, there is White 4 in Dia. 17. Black connects at 5
and although White is cut off, he can live by playing 6.
There is something maddening to Black about reading to this point,
proving that no matter how White answers Black 1 he can be cut off,
only to discover that the cut-off group can live. Patiently Black goes on
and tests other Black 1's, like the one in Dia. 18, but they
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all fail. The conclusion he comes to is that Dia. 19 is the best sequence
for both sides.
Since he has put so much thought into it, Black may be tempted to
play out Dia. 19 even though it is not a real success; at least it gives him
some profit in sente, and maybe White will miss the tesuji at 2.
There are two reasons, however, why Black should restrain himself.
The first is that moves like these should be saved for use as ko threats.
Most games involve at least one ko fight, and the player who squanders
his threats before the ko is going to be sorry. If Black leaves the position
alone White is not likely to bother making a defensive move, so the
opportunity to play 1 will still be there later on.
The second reason is that there is always the chance of having made
a reading mistake. Especially in a non-urgent position like this, you can
afford to turn your attention elsewhere, then come back later for a
second look. Re-examining positions that you have already read out is a
good way to spend the time waiting for your opponent to play; it often
turns up moves that were missed before.
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In the position we are considering, for example, if Black looks again
he may finally see 5 in Dia. 20, which destroys White's eye shape while
inflicting shortage of liberties on him to keep him from cutting at a.
Now he has the truth. He does not have to play 1 at once, but he knows
that when the time comes, the white stones are there for the taking.
When you have a sequence that almost works, like the one in Dia.
19, it is a good idea not to give up on it. Often changing just one move,
or changing the order of moves, or reading just one move further is all
that is needed.
What about the positions that are simply too hard to read out? As far
as possible, they should be left alone. Future developments may alter
them, and the unreadable may become readable, and anyway you lose
much more by having a lot of stones captured in a sequence that fails
than by letting your opponent defend where you could have destroyed
him. In the latter case, while your opponent is defending you get two
moves in a row elsewhere on the board. In the former case there is no
compensation. Sometimes, of course, you have to push ahead blindly,
but remember that it is weak players who are always playing in
situations they cannot read out, and strong players who refrain from
playing even when they have the situation completely read out.
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Most of the rest of this book consists of examples of tesuji and
problems on which you can practice your reading. One word of warning
about the answers to the problems is necessary. In general there will be
only one or two answer diagrams, showing how the correct answer
succeeds against the opponent's strongest resistance. For the problem
read out in this chapter, only the variations of diagrams 7, 20, and
perhaps 10 would appear in the answer diagrams. The rest of the reading
would be left up to you. Occasionally a wrong answer is shown as a
pitfall, and marked 'failure'.
Since the opponent's strongest resistance to the correct answer fails,
it will not usually be the best move for him to make in actual play.
Faced with Black 1 in Dia. 20, for instance, White's best response is not
the 'strongest' move at 2, but rather no move at all. In the endgame
White should play the hane, (2 at 3), and connect, a variation that would
not appear among the answer diagrams. If you respect your opponent's
reading ability you will want to avoid many of the even-numbered
moves in the answer diagrams of this book.
It took us twenty diagrams to get through one problem in this
chapter, but most of the problems coming up will not turn out to be so
complicated, and even the hard ones should not take so long once you
have gotten a grasp of tesuji. The importance of learning tesuji is that
you learn where to look for the answer, and can go straight to the move
that works without having to waste time thinking about moves that fail.
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2. CAPTURE THE CUTTING STONES
Diagram 1 shows the kind of move that this chapter is about. White
has one stone on the outside, partly surrounded by black stones but
ready to make a dash for the open. Black 1 traps it, blocking its escape
and capturing it.
Diagram 2 shows the same type of operation, except that now Black 1
captures two white stones. Try as they may, they cannot escape. In the
next few pages you will meet more advanced tesuji for trapping enemy
stones out in the open or for running them to earth at the edge of the
board.
What makes moves like this worth playing is not so much the size of
the capture—Black is getting only two points in Dia. 1 and four points
in Dia. 2—but the fact that the captured stones were cutting stones. If
White, instead of Black, played 1 in Dia. 1 for example, the black stones
would be split into two very weak groups, one or the other of which
would almost surely die.
Contrast this with Dia. 3, where the two white stones are not cutting
stones. Black could capture them with a, but that would be only a four-
point move of little significance. Black should ignore the enemy
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stones, extend farther from his position, and try to surround a much
larger area.
The Knight's-Move Tesuji.
Dia 1. Black wants to capture the two white stones in the center. Black
a, the obvious move, does not work because White can push out
between a and ⇒ and escape with a series of ataris, as shown next.
Dia. 2. Ataris at 4 and 6 spring White free. Fortunately there is a play
that succeeds where Black 1 fails.
Dia. 3. This Black 1 is the tesuji; observe its knight's-move relation to
Black ⇒, the weak stone that caused the trouble in the previous
diagram. After 2 and 3 an atari against Black ⇒ would accomplish
nothing, and White is trapped much as in Dia. 2 on the previous page.
Dia. 4. Nor can White escape this way. Black 3 stops him.
The answers to the following two problems are on the next page.
Problem 1. White to play and capture the cutting stones.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1, a knight's move away from the weak
stone @, does the job.
Dia. 1a. This is the wrong knight's move. Black 2 makes a neat escape.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 traps the black stones.
Dia. 2a. If Black plays 2, White has a short ladder.
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The Loose Ladder Tesuji.
Dia. 1. If Black is going to get any kind of result out of this position he
has to capture the pair of white stones to the right of a, but how? An
atari at a would not work.
Dia. 2. Black 1 is the tesuji; it sets up a loose ladder.
Dia. 3. Black guides White firmly to the edge of the board with 3 and 5,
not only trapping the fleeing stones but capturing the whole corner. If at
any point White plays a, Black b puts him in atari and hastens his end.
Problem 1. White to play and capture the cutting stone. It is not enough
to find the first move; read out the whole sequence accurately.
Problem 2. Black to play and capture White's cutting stones. If you can't
head them off in one 'direction, try the other direction.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 and 7 are the key plays.
Answer to problem 2. This time the sequence starts with an atari.
The Slapping Tesuji.
Dia. J. Black is trying to bring his two stones out into the open with ⇒,
(although he is doing it wrong, as will quickly become clear). Can
White stop him? The series of ataris, i.e. the ladder, that starts with
White a is broken by Black ⇒, so White must look for something else.
Dia. 2. In this shape White 1 is the tesuji. It makes White a a real threat,
so if Black is going to resist he must either connect at a himself or try to
slip out with b.
Dia. 3. But if Black connects at 2, White has him in a loose ladder with
3 and the rest.
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Dia. 4. Black 6 here, an attempt to set up a snap-back, bows before
White 7.
Dia. 5. What about the other possible Black 2? White 3 gives atari, and
from there on the moves are the same as before, except that the loose
ladder becomes an ordinary ladder.
Dia. 6. To return to Black's original move, if he wants to escape he has
to make an empty triangle with 1. Empty triangles are bad shape, but at
least he has a chance to split White up and attack.
Problem 1. Black to play and capture the cutting stones.
Problem 2. Black to play and capture the cutting stones. Be sure you
have read out the whole sequence correctly.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the tesuji, rnd the rest is simple.
Answer to problem 2. Here the important point, aside from the tesuji at
1, is seeing when to jump ahead. Any move other than 7 would fail.
The Clamping Tesuji.
Dia. 1. There may seem to be no way for White to capture anything in

this position. If he cuts at a, for example, Black can get away with b.
Dia. 2. There is a tesuji, however: the clamping move at 1. Its effect is
to make miai of a and b.
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Dia. 3. For Black to connect at 2 is pointless. White 3 leaves him with
no room to wriggle.
Dia. 4. But if he extends out with 2, White 3 severs him. Black's 4 does
not work because White 5 captures his stones in a snap-back. Similarly,
if Black played 2 at 4, White would answer at 5, leaving 2 and 3 as miai.
Clamping tesuji do not always involve snap-back, but they are some-
times hard to see, so we have given you three problems this time.
Problem 2. Black to play and halt White's escape. Don't be confused by
extraneous stones.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 is the clamping tesuji; it makes a and b
miai. If Black plays 2, White plays 3, and vice versa.
Answer to problem 2. This time Black has to make his clamping move
right in between two white stones, but it still works. Again a and b are
miai, and the three white stones above a are cut off and done for.
Answer to problem 3. White 1 is a surprising tesuji. Black's best
response is 2, but White 3 gives atari and if Black connects he will still
be in atari.
Dia. 3a. Black's play in this diagram only magnifies his loss. After
White 3, a and b are miai on one side and c and d are miai on the other,
and the three stones including Black 2 are captured.
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The Nose Tesnji.
Dia. 1. Black is in a position to capture the upper pair of white stones,

but he must be careful because the danger of White a is staring him in
the face. A non-contact play would be too slow.
Dia. 2. Black 1 hits White squarely on the nose, so to speak. More to the
point, it defends against a and catches the white stones in a loose ladder.
Dia. 3. Black 3 and 5 drive White to the edge of the board and allow
him no escape.
Problem 1. White to play and capture the cutting stones. As usual, be
sure to read out the whole sequence.
Problem 2. Black to play and capture the stone marked ⇓. The nose
tesuji is not the first move, but comes later.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 is the nose tesuji, and 3 and 5 finish the
job. Answer to problem 2. This time the nose tesuji comes at Black 3.
The Gross-Girt Tesuji.
Dia. 1. Black seems to be separated into two groups, a corner one and
an outside one, but there is a way for him to link them up and capture
the two white stones that stand in between.
It would be a fatal mistake for Black to start by giving atari at a.
Common sense might tell you that; Black can give atari either at a or
from the other side, so he should hold both ataris in reserve and wait
until one of them becomes effective.
Dia. 2. The tesuji is the contact play at 1. White's best response is 2, and
Black cross-cuts with 3.
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Dia. 3. If White gives atari at 4, Black gives a counter-atari at 5 and
White cannot connect at 7 because of shortage of liberties. All he can do
is to capture at 6, letting Black have two stones with 7 or a.
Dia. 4. If White gives atari from the other direction with 4, Black alters
5 accordingly.
Dia. 5. There is one move to watch out for in this shape. Occasionally
when Black plays 1 White can resist with 2, threatening a and b.
Dia. 6. But in the present position Black can foil White and make a big
capture with 3 etc.
Problem 1. White to play and capture the cutting stone.
Problem 2. Black to play and capture the cutting stone.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 and 3 are the cross-cut tesuji. After Black
4 to 6, White may prefer to play 7 instead of a for the sake of eye shape
in the corner.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 puts the cutting stone in atari, and if
White draws out at 2, Black 3 and 5 are the cross-cut tesuji.
More Problems.
The following eleven problems range from the very easy, such as
numbers 3 and 4, to the moderately difficult, such as number 11. In each
of them the idea is to capture the cutting stones. In one of the problems,
(number 1), Black can save his cutting stones if he plays a certain way,
but White can get a good result anyhow.
The answers appear briefly on the following two pages. As usual, the
answer diagrams show moves that the player who loses the sequence
should leave unplayed.
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28
29
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3. AMPUTATE THE CUTTING STONES
The theme of this chapter is the same as that of the last: the capture
of small groups of enemy stones. The difference is that whereas before
the idea was to capture them by blocking their escape route, the idea
now is to capture them by detaching them from a larger body of enemy
stones, and the techniques differ accordingly. Usually the target stones
will be cutting stones, but we shall not be finicky about going after non-
cutting stones on occasion for the sheer profit of capturing them.
Snap-Back.
Snap-backs are the first really interesting tactics of the game that
most players learn; perhaps you can remember when you first
encountered one. For those who may not be sure of the term, the next
three diagrams present a quick review.
Dia. 1. White 1 is a snap-back capturing move. It puts two black stones

in atari. Black could take White 1 by playing a, but White would just
replay at 1 and capture three stones.
Dia. 2. This is another snap-back pattern. Again Black could capture,
but White would just recapture.
Dia. 3. This is a snap-back at the edge.
Now for some applications.
31
Dia. 4. Black has an opportunity to capture five stones, but surprisingly
many players would fail to see it and link underneath at a instead.
Dia. 5. Any capture must begin with the cut at 1. At first, however, it
looks as if Black 1 fails, for White 2 is atari against it and Black cannot
connect at a.
Dia. 6. But all is well. Black answers 2 at 3 and has the five stones in a
snap-back.
Problem 1. Black to play and capture.
Problem 2. White to play. The cutting has already been done. The
question is how to finish the job.
Problem 3. Black to play. White seems to have escaped, but...
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 and 3 are decisive.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 forces the snap-back. If Black plays 2 at
3, White can connect at a.
If White played 1 at 3, Black a would win.
Answer to problem 3. Black 1 cuts White in two, and 5 completes the
job.
The Throw-In Tesuji.
Dia. 1. As usual, Black needs to find a way to capture the cutting stones.
This position calls for a throw-in tesuji.
Dia. 2. Black 1 is the throw-in, a kind of sacrifice that deprives the
enemy of essential liberties. White captures at 2, but...
33
Dia. 3. Now Black gives atari at 3, and if White connects at 4, Black 5 is
atari against the whole group.
Dia. 4. This shows, for comparison's sake, what happens if Black plays
1 without making the throw-in. White has one more liberty on the side
than he did before, and can answer 3 at 4. Black's position is ruined.
As the following problems will show, throw-in tesuji are not confined to
the edge of the board.

Problem 3. White to play. A throw-in will set up a short ladder.
34
Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the throw-in.
Answer to problem 2. After Black 3, White cannot connect because of
shortage of liberties.
Answer to problem 3. White 1 is the liberty-destroying throw-in, and
White has stones in just the right places to make the ladder work. This is
actually a kind of squeeze sequence, so it Serves as a good introduction
to the next topic.
The Squeeze Tesuji.
Dia. 1. Take a good look at the black group on the right side and see if
you can find any way for White to capture part of it.
Dia. 2. White 1 is the first move to examine. Black 2 is the correct
defense, and against White 3, Black can play 4. White 5 is a nice try, but
if Black answers at 6, White is one move down in the fight and there is
nothing he can do about it.
So White 1 does not work. What else is there?
35
Dia. 3. Here is the tesuji combination. White 1 looks like a cut doomed
to failure, but then comes the startling play at 3, and suddenly Black is
in atari and in trouble.
Dia. 4. The best Black can do is capture at 4 and let White connect at 5.
White now has three liberties as against two for the black stones in the
corner.
Dia. 5. If Black captures the wrong stone with 4, White comes out of
atari at 5. Connections at o and 7 leave White ahead, four liberties to
three, and Black has lost everything.
White's technique in these diagrams is called shibori in Japanese, a
word meaning 'to wring out'. It uses sacrifice stones to wring the
liberties out of an enemy position and squeeze it into a compact mass.
Problem 1. Black to play and capture the corner.
Problem 2. Black to play and capture on the lower side. This is a
different squeezing pattern, but an easy one.
36
Ans. to Prob. 1 Dia. Ia Dia Ib
Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the squeeze tesuji.

Dia. la. If White captures at 2, Black gives atari and connects. This puts
him one move ahead in the corner.
Dia. Ib. No matter what antics White tries next, he cannot win the fight.
Dia. Ic. So White's best response, when Black plays 1, is the sequence
shown here.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 is a common squeeze tesuji. After 5 Black
leads the fight, three liberties to two.
Ladder-Building.
Dia. 1. Black has three stones trapped on the right side. Is there a way
to save them, or should he give up and play a?
37
Dia. 2. There is a way. Black 1 and 3 threaten ladders at a and b, and if
White defends on one side, Black will get him on the other.
Of course, if the ladder at a does not work, then this tesuji is useless.
Dia. 3. Assuming the ladder does work, the best defense White has
locally is to play 4 and link up underneath. Black need not answer White
8. Even without connecting, he has done much better than if he had
played a in Dia. 1.
The next two problems are like this example, except that instead of
of two ladders, you will have to set up a ladder and something else.
Assume the ladders work.
Problem 1. White to play.
Problem 2. Only two liberties! Black to play.
38
Answer to problem 1. White 1 and 3 threaten a ladder at a and a capture
at b.
Dia. la. Even if the ladder does not work, the moves in the answer
diagram are correct, for White can still get a strong position by playing
5 and 7.
Answer to problem 2. Black 5 threatens a and b.
The Placement Tesuji
Dia. 1. The classic example of this tesuji occurs after the joseki shown.
If White does not get around to playing a, Black has a way to pick off
one third of his group.
39
Dia. 2. Black 1 is the tesuji. The name 'placement' comes from the fact
that it is placed within White's position, not in contact with any other
stones.
Dia. 3. White's almost invariable reply is to give up his stone by playing
2, 4, and 6. Black has made a large capture, although in gote.
Dia. 4. What if White makes this diagonal move with 2, and endeavors
some resistance? Black 3, 5, and 7 follow, and by making the double
hane at 13 Black wins the fight. If that is not clear now, and it probably
is not, it will become clear in chapter five. Woe be to Black, however, if
he plays 13 at <z, for then White 13 will threaten b and White will win
the fight.
Apart from complications like Dia. 4, there is the question of how
soon to play Black 1 in Dia. 2. Big as it is, it is not usually worth giving
up sente to make in the opening.
Problem 1. Black to play and capture the white stones in the corner.
Problem 2. White to play on the left side. He has six stones to rescue.
40
Answer to problem 1. If White played 2 at 3, Black would play 3 at 2
and the result would be worse for White.
Answer to problem 2. If Black answers correctly at 2, White 3 makes a
and b miai, and White has saved his stones.
Dia. 2a. If Black plays 2, White pushes through at 3 and gets the whole
lot.
More Problems.
The following twelve problems review the techniques of this chapter

and introduce some other similar ones. The object in each is capture,
and the target will always consist of at least two enemy stones.
1.Black to play 2.Black to play 3. Black to play
41
42
43
44
4. KO
Many go players dislike ko fights; understandably so, for they are
forced not only to think about the local situation, which is likely to be
complicated enough, but to weigh it against all the ko threats available
to both players, to weigh those ko threats against each other, and
preferably to do so before the ko begins. It follows, therefore, that if you
can start a ko fight that you have a fair chance of winning, you may
have scored a psychological, as well as a tactical, triumph. There are
many simple tesuji for causing ko. Consider the following:
Dia. 1. In this posion Black seems to be alive. To start with, he is

threatening to capture a stone with a.
Dia. 2. And even if White connects, Black 2 makes a living shape.
White, however, should be in no rush to play 1, an endgame move, but
should leave the position as it stands in Dia. 1. Black a in that diagram
is gote.
Dia. 3. Choosing a time when he is backed up by an adequate number of
ko threats, White can unleash the double-hane tesuji at 1. Against Black
2, White plays 3 and the ko is on. This could be a nasty surprise for
Black.
45
If White loses the ko, then of course he takes a certain loss on the
right edge as compared with Dia. 2, but that should be more than
compensated for by his ko threat. If Black loses, his whole group is
dead; that will be harder to compensate for. This kind of ko fight, where
you risk little or nothing and your opponent risks a lot, is the most fun
and the most profitable.
The next five problems feature some more easy tesuji for starting ko
fights of this one-sided variety.
Problem 1. White to play in the corner.
Problem 2. White to play. If he wins the ko, all his groups will be
united.
Problem 3. Black to play.
Problem 4, White to play. What can a group with only two liberties do?
Problem 5. Black to play and kill.
46
Answer to problem 1. White 1 is the only move. If White played 1 at 4,
Black would exchange a for b, then fill the liberty at 2 and win
unconditionally.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 is the familiar clamping tesuji.
Answer to problem 3. Black 1 is a common tesuji for making ko in the
corner. Black's risk in this ko fight is pretty close to nil, compared with
White's. Black must not, of course, use 1 to capture at a and get himself
ataried by b.
Answer to problem 4. A throw-in at 1 is the means to ko. Answer to

problem 5. The double-hane tesuji appears again. Black 1 at 3 looks
tempting, but it fails if White answers at 1.
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Indirect Ko
The ko fights in the previous section were direct ones; either side
could finish the ko and win by ignoring just one enemy ko threat. By no
means all ko fights, however, are like this. There are many interesting
types of indirect ko fights, the main ones being the following.
Multi-Step Ko
Dia. 1, White 1 begins a ko to capture the three black stones in the

corner and save the five white stones they are cutting off. For Black this
is a direct ko; if he ignores one white ko threat, he can capture White 1
and the ko will be over. For White, however, this is a two-step ko.
Dia. 2. Assuming White gets to recapture at 1, Black will make his first
ko threat with 2. Suppose White ignores it; he cannot connect the ko, of
course. The best he can do is to give atari at 3, moving from step one to
step two.
Dia. 3. Black recaptures at 4, and if White is to win the ko he will have
to ignore a second black ko threat later on.
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Dia. 4. There is no limit to the number of extra moves one side may
have to make. In this diagram, for example, Black starts a three-step ko
with 1. He will have to ignore three white ko threats, in order to play a,
b, and c, if he is to win it. For White, the ko is direct.
Needless to say, the player who is behind in a multi-step ko is at a
big disadvantage. He should not even start the ko unless he can see that
he has a large enough surplus of ko threats to make a profit out of it, or
unless the situation is desperate.
If you are faced with a multi-step ko and do not have the ko threats,
or the confidence, to go through with it, then the best thing to do is to
leave it alone for the time being, but try to shift the balance of ko threats
in your favor. If your opponent has to take time out from the midst of
operations elsewhere to go back and erase the ko, that will be the same
as if he had ignored one of your ko threats, and you will not have had to
ignore any of his.
Two-Stage Ko.
Dia. 1. This corner position arises frequently. White's three stones

appear to be lost, but there is a way for him to make a ko.
Dia. 2. White 1 and 3 are the tesuji combination.
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Dia. 3. Black captures at 4, but White gives atari at 5. If Black now
connects, White a causes a direct ko. It is better for Black to capture at
6, for then the ko is indirect.
Dia. 4. This is a two-stage ko. After making a ko threat and having
Black answer it, White can recapture at 1 and the two players can fight
back and forth at 1 and ⇒: stage one.
Dia. 5. If White ignores a black ko threat his next play is 3, and the ko
will be fought back and forth at 3 and ⇒: stage two. White will have to
ignore a second ko threat in order to win the ko.
A two-stage ko is better for the player behind than a two-step ko,

because after he ignores the first ko threat and moves from stage one to
stage two, the ko becomes direct for him and indirect for his opponent.
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Thousand-Year Ko
Dia. 1. This is one example of what is called a thousand-year ko. Notice

first of all that if White connects the ko as it stands, the result is a seki.
Dia. 2. Suppose that Black wants to capture White. He must take at 1,
ignore a ko threat, fill the common liberty at 3, then ignore another ko
threat in order to win. For him, that is, the ko is a two-step ko.
Dia. 3. If White wants to capture Black, then he must assume the
responsibility of filling the common liberty at 1. Unfortunately, this
helps Black by giving him a direct ko instead of a two-step one, and
furthermore, White has to find the first ko threat.
From diagrams 2 and 3 it is clear that even when Black and White
both want to fight the ko, each of them would rather have it started by
the other player. This may lead to the position's being left as it is in Dia.
1 for a long time, which accounts for the name 'thousand year'. If the
game ends with neither player willing to start the ko, then White must
connect and the position becomes a seki. Of course, if either player
wants or needs to win the ko badly enough he can shoulder the burden
and start it, but he should make sure of his ko threats first.
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Double Ko
A double ko is the ultimate variety of indirect ko. It is so indirect that

it is not even a ko at all in the ordinary sense, but just a source of ko
threats.
Dia. 1. This is a currently popular variation of the avalanche joseki.

After 25 Black has to make an extension up the right side, for his three
stones in the corner are dead. If he plays a, for example, White plays b
and Black cannot win the fight. White 6 can be used as a safe response
to any other move that Black tries.
Dia. 2. What happens, then, if Black takes White's point for himself
with 1 ? This leads to a double ko. White 2 is necessary, and then Black
plays 3.
Dia. 3. If White now approached from the outside with 4, Black would
do the same with 5, and he would have a two-step ko. Considering the
value of the stones involved, even a two-step ko would be a serious
threat to White. White's play in this diagram is therefore ill-advised.
Dia. 4. Before rilling the liberty at 6, White should exchange 4 for 5,
and this makes a double ko. Now White cannot lose.
52
Dia. 5. If Black takes the upper ko with 1 to put White into atari, White
takes the lower ko with 2 and regains his two liberties. Since his corner
is in atari, Black does not have time to fill the upper ko; he must make a
ko threat.
Dia. 6. White answers the ko threat, and Black recaptures at 5. But
White recaptures at 6, and Black cannot fill the lower ko, for that would
be putting himself in atari. All he can do is to make another ko threat,
then repeat Dia. 5.
In short, diagrams 5 and 6 could be repeated over and over, with
Black making all the ko threats. Eventually he would run out and have
to give up. In practice, Black will not go through diagrams 5 and 6 even
once, so as not to waste ko threats in a hopeless cause.
Although Black cannot win the double ko, he can still get something
out of it. He can use diagrams 5 and 6 as ko threats in some other ko
fight. This gives him an infinite supply of ko threats, so he can be sure
of winning any ko fight that is not larger than the roughly thirty points
involved here.
Dia. 7. A double ko can also be a seki, as this example shows.
Capturing and recapturing at 1 and 2 always leaves both sides with two
liberties, and neither side can ever connect at either place. If this
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type of double ko is combined with a ko elsewhere on the board, it
serves as an infinite source of ko threats for both sides, and if neither
player is willing to give in in such a triple ko, the game is cancelled.
In the following three problems, first try to make a ko, then see if you
can identify the kind of ko you have made.
Problem 3. Black to play. To make a direct ko out of this would be a big
failure.
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Answer to problem 1. If Black plays 4, then the ko is a two-step one in
White's favor. Black may prefer to play 4 elsewhere, seeking to create
ko threats and leaving the ko as a three-step one.
Answer to problem 2. This is a two-stage ko, again in White's favor. The
throw-in at 1 is necessary; if Black plays 1 at 3, then White 1, Black 2,
White 4, Black takes two stones, White recaptures, and Black has no
move.
Answer to problem 3. Black 1 creates a double ko. White has a false
eye, and his group is dead.
The Best Ko.
In many positions ko can be reached in two different ways, and it is

important to choose the best way. This might be the way that gives you
a direct ko instead of an indirect one, or that does the opposite to your
opponent, or it might be the way that forces your opponent to hunt for
the first ko threat, as in the following example.
55
Dia. 1. Black to play. The first thing to observe is that he cannot start
with a: White b, Black c, White d, and Black is in atari. Nor can he get
any more liberties by pushing out to b, for White e would still leave him
with three. In fact, b would be a bad mistake, spoiling what chance
Black does have, as perhaps you can see.
Dia. 2. This Black 1 is not much better. Black seeks ko with 3, but
White answers at 4, taking no chances. The result is a double ko that
Black cannot win.
Dia. 3. How about 1 here? Now Black is getting closer, and after 2 and
3 he has a direct ko. The only thing he has done wrong is to saddle
himself with the burden of making the first ko threat.
Dia. 4. His best way is to start with the throw-in at 1. Now, after White
4, he gets to make the first ko capture and White has to find the first ko
threat.
Problem 1. Black to play and live in ko, forcing White to make the first
ko threat.
Problem 2. Black to play and make ko—the best way.
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Answer to problem 1. The key move is 5, but Black starts by making
throw-ins at 1 and 3. That gives him the first ko capture with 7.
Dia. la. If Black starts with 1, White gets to make the first ko capture
and Black has to look for the first ko threat.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 and 3 cause a direct ko in which White

has to make the first ko threat. White cannot play 2 at 5, (Black plays 3
at 4 or a), and Black cannot play 1 at a, (White plays 4 and wins).
Dia. 2a. If Black plays 3 incorrectly, he faces an indirect ko in which he
has to find the first ko threat.
More Problems.
Most of the problems so far in this chapter have been rather easy, so
to balance things out, here are a few harder ones The object in each is to
save a group of friendly stones, or capture a group of enemy stones, or
do both. All of the kos are direct, but in
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problems number 2 and 6 there are two ways to get ko.
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In the first answer to problem 2 Black perfects his outer wall with 7,
but White gets a ko threat at a. In the variation White has no such ko
threat, but if he wins the ko anyway he can then push through the gap in
Black" s wall and cut.
If Black played 4 at 9 in the answer diagram to problem 3 there

would be no ko—White would win outright.
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The inferior answer lets Black make the first ko capture.
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5. WHEN LIBERTIES COUNT
Of course liberties always count, but this is especially so when two
opposing groups are locked in combat, neither able to form two eyes
and hence each trying to capture the other. This chapter covers the
principles and tesuji involved in such fights.
Frequently, who wins the fight is just a question of who has the more
liberties.
Dia. 1. The black and white groups touching the left edge have four
liberties apiece. Since they are even, the side that plays first will win.
Dia. 2. If Black plays first, he ends by capturing White. Notice that he
fills White's outside liberties first, saving the inside one for last.
Dia. 3. If Black started from the inside, both groups would lose one
liberty and suddenly White would be ahead. To fill from the outside is
the first principle in fights like this.
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Approach Moves.
In the previous example the number of moves needed to capture each

group was equal to the number of its liberties, but this is not always
true.
Dia. 1. In this fight White has four liberties and Black has only two, but
that does not mean that White is going to win, even if he plays first. He
has to make three approach moves before he can give atari and they,
coupled with Black's two liberties, put Black one ahead.
Dia. 2. White 1, 3, and 5 are the approach moves. Black 6 gives atari,
and Black wins the fight.
In the following problems the idea is to win the fight by forcing the
enemy to make approach moves.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 saves the day. After White 5, Black has
no move. (White 1 at 5 also works.)
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 is the key play. The order of 1 and 3 may
be reversed.
Answer to problem 3. This time the order of White 1 and 3 may not be
reversed. If 1 at 3, then Black a. White b, and Black c.
Descent To the Edge.
Dia. 1. Black is behind, four liberties to three, yet he can win this fight
if he makes the right play first.
Dia. 2. He begins by descending straight to the edge. An extension like
this is often worth an extra move. The liberties now stand at four to
four.
Dia. 3. If White plays 2 here, he loses a liberty by making an empty
triangle. After 3, Black leads, three liberties to two.
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Dia. 4. If White plays from this side he can get no further than 4, then
he has to go back and make an approach move at a. Again Black wins.
Dia. 5. If Black began with the hane at 1 instead of playing straight
down, he would lose the fight. This time, after 2 to 5, White can play 6
without making an empty triangle, and Black'"? goose is cooked.
Problem 1. Black to play and win the corner.
Problem 2. White to play and win the corner.
Problem 3. Black to play and save his isolated stone on the right side.
This problem looks impossible, which is what makes it interesting.
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Answer to problem 1. After 1 and 3 Black leads the fight. White 4 and 6
come to nothing if properly handled.
Answer to problem 2. White starts with 1, then descends to the edge
with 3, and Black cannot get him into atari from either side. If Black
next tries to make a ko with a, White b foils him.
Dia. 2a. A variation. White wins again.
Answer to problem 3. Black makes straight for the edge of the board
with 1 and 3, and White has no choice but to answer with 2 and 4. Now
Black has enough liberties to cut at 5.
Dia. 3a. If White stops the cut with 4, Black wins with a throw-in.
Dia. 3b. This is another White 4 that fails.
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The Throw-In TesuJi
Dia. 1. If Black tries to run away with a, White can stop him with b, so
he had better find some way of out-dueling the white group on the lower
side.
Dia. 2. But Black seems to be far behind. After 1 and 2, for example, he
has four liberties to White's seven.
Dia. 3. Black must throw in a stone at 1; this tesuji devours three enemy
liberties. If White connects after 5, each side has four liberties and
Black, whose move is next, can win.
Problem 1. Black to play and win.
Problem 2. Black to play and win in the corner.
Problem 3. White to play and capture the two black stones. The throw-
in comes a few moves deep in the sequence.
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Answer to problem 1. Two throw-ins do the trick. Answer to problem
2. If White does not play 2, Black will. Answer to problem 3. After
the throw-in at 5, Black will be in atari the rest of the way.
The Two-Stone Edge Squeeze.
Dia. 1. If Black plays a and forces White to connect at 6, the white

stones will have five liberties to three for the black ones in the corner.
Black can win this fight, but he has to start with something fancier.
Dia. 2. The sacrificial cut at 1 is the way to reduce White's liberties. A
further sacrifice at 3 is necessary, too, and then Black plays 5, which
keeps White from forming an eye.
Dia. 3. The throw-in at 7 completes the job; if White connects after 11,
Black a is atari. This whole operation, in which a two-stone sacrifice is
used to rob White of his liberties, is called the two-stone edge squeeze.
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Dia. 4. The two-stone corner squeeze operates in the same way. This
position comes from page 39. Black 1 begins the squeeze.
Dia. 5. Black sacrifices a second stone at 5, then gives atari with 7.
Dia. 6. The throw-in at 9 is an atari, and White has to capture at 10.
Then Black just connects at 11. If White defends the eye with a, Black b
leaves him with only two liberties. Or if White c, then Black 6, White d,
Black a.
Problem 1. Black to play and win the corner.
Problem 2. White to play and win the corner.
Problem 3. A variation of the taisha joseki. White to play: how should
he, (and Black), continue?
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Answer to problem 1. The classic pattern.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 reduces this to problem 1.
Answer to problem 3. White should cut at 1. Against Black 2, he starts
the two-stone edge squeeze.
Dia. 3a. White has the diagonal tesuji at 15 to cope with Black 12 and
14. No matter how Black plays, he is lost.
Dia. 3b. Backtracking, we see that after White 3 Black must run away
with 4. The sequence up to 10 is correct. Black's profit in the corner and
stronger position in the center balance White's gains on the left side.
Dia. 3c. These are the moves leading up to this variation.
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The Fast Squeeze.
Dia. 1. White's stones on the outside have only two liberties, so he has
to move fast if he is going to win the fight against the black stones in the
corner. He cannot afford to play a or b.
Dia. 2. Ignoring the atari against ⇓, White plays the hane at 1. If Black
captures at 2, White follows with 3 and it is all over in a flash.
Dia. 3. This Black 2 is clearly of no avail.
Problem 1. Black to play and capture the stones on the left side.
Problem 2. Black to play and capture the stones on the left side.
Problem 3. Black to play and win. The pattern is different, but the
general idea is similar.
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Answer to problem 1. Black attacks in sente with 1 and 3, then goes
back to defend his own weakness at 5, leaving White surrounded and
dead.
Answer to problem 2. The order of 1 and 3 may be reversed.
Answer to problem 3. Black 1 to 7 are the only way.
The Belly Tesuji.
Dia. 1. This position occurs frequently. Each side has three liberties, so
it is reasonable to expect that if White plays first he can win.
Dia. 2. But if he starts with the hane at 1, he will be stymied by Black 2.
Perhaps he will try to start a ko with 3, (Black a, White b), but Black 4
makes even that difficult.
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Dia. 3. White 1 is the correct move. It comes at what is called the belly
of the black stones.
Dia. 4. If Black plays 2 here White links underneath with 3, and
struggle as he may, Black cannot get more than two liberties.
Dia. 5. Or if Black plays 2 here, White 3 settles matters.
The belly tesuji turns up in a variety of situations, as in the next two
problems.
Problem 1. Black is threatening both a and b. White to play.
Problem 2. Black to play and win on the lower side.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1, the belly tesuji, defends simultaneously
against Black 3 and Black a. After 2 to 5, Black's stones are left dead on
the side.
Answer to problem 2. The belly tesuji gives Black the tempo to play 3,
and then he can capture a total of eight white stones with 5. If Black
played 3 without 1, White would fill one of his liberties on the lower
edge.
Gaining Liberties.
Dia. 1. Both sides have four liberties, but White is a move ahead
because of his having descended to the edge. If Black plays a, for
instance, White will answer at b and Black will lose. Before filling
White's liberties, Black needs to increase the number of his own.
Dia. 2. A placement tesuji does the trick.
73
Dia. 3. White should connect at 2, but then 3 and 5 leave Black with six
liberties, just enough to win.
Dia. 4. Black must resist the temptation to try for an eye with 3, because
that makes an empty triangle and costs him a liberty. Now he loses.
Dia. 5. As for White, if he tries to hold Black down with 2 and 4, Black
5 stops him short.
Dia. 6. White 2 in this diagram looks like a clever squeeze tesuji, but
Black still comes out ahead, four liberties to three, and wins the fight.
Problem 1. Black to play and save all his stones.
Problem 2. White to play. He needs one more liberty.
Problem 3. White to play. Gaining another liberty is not so hard, but
remember; Black has a tesuji too.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 threatens 2.
Answer to problem 2. The exchange up to 4 gives White four liberties,
and he wins the fight with 5.
Answer to problem 3. White gains a liberty in sente with 1 etc., then
settles the fight with 7. He could also gain a liberty by playing 1 at 3,
but then Black 1, White 5, Black a, and White would lose.
Eyes.
Dia. 1. Eye shape is usually worth something extra. Here, for example,
Black is behind in liberties, but he has an eye and White cannot bring
him into atari.
Dia. 2. After 2, White cannot do anything more without putting himself
into atari. Black, however, could put White into atari by
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Dia. 4 Dia. 5 Dia. 6
filling his outside liberties, then playing 1. In this type of fight, the
player without the eye cannot win unless he has a large surplus of
outside liberties.
Dia. 3. When the enemy has the beginnings of an eye, he must not be
allowed to finish it unhindered. In this position, White must not let
Black play a.
Dia. 4. He must play 1 himself. Then he can win.
Dia. 5. A variation. Again White wins.
Dia. 6. But if he starts with a contact play, he loses.
Problem 1. Black to play and win in the corner.
Problem 2. White to play and win.
Problem 3. Black to play and win.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the only move.
Dia. 1a. A variation. Black still wins.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 is the tesuji. After Black 2 the situation is
a bit tricky, but White is ahead, and he is absolutely safe if he plays as
shown.
Dia. 2a. If White lets Black have 2, he loses. After 6 Black has an eye,
White does not, and he cannot put Black into atari.
Answer to problem 3. Black wins unconditionally. The ko is irrelevant,
since White can never put Black into atari.
Dia. 3a. This is a failure—White lives in seki—and Black 1 at 4 would
bring on a thousand-year ko.
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The Diagonal Tesuji.
Dia. 1. How should White play in this position?
Dia. 2. If he goes straight up to the edge, then Black 2 causes a seki. In

fact, Black does not even have to play 2; the situation will still be seki if
he ignores it.
Dia. 3. Worse yet, if White plays 1 here, thinking that puts him ahead
three liberties to two, he will be caught by Black 2 and lose outright.
Dia. 4. The tesuji is the diagonal move at 1. Now Black can make no
contact play against White.
Dia. 5. Black has to make the approach move at 2, but White 3 gives
atari and White wins.
Problem 1. White to play and win. Should he start by destroying the eye
in the corner or by making the diagonal tesuji?
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Answer to problem 1. White should start with the diagonal tesuji. After
5, Black has no further contact plays to make, while White is ready to
put him into atari.
Dia. la. Black can make an eye with 2, but he is still a move behind.
Dia. Ib. If White starts with 1 here, Black can get a two-step ko with 2
and 4.
Big Eyes.
A four- or five-space eye is not necessarily a living shape, but it

takes extra moves to fill one up, as the two examples below will
demonstrate.
Dia. 1. Each side has four liberties, so whoever starts will win this fight
—right? Wrong. It takes five stones to fill a four-space eye, and White
is a move behind.
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Dia. 2. White 1 and 3 are two of the five stones. White 5 and Black 6
cancel.
Dia. 3. White 7 and 9 are stones number three and four, but Black has a
liberty left and wins.
Dia. 4. It takes eight stones to fill a five-space eye, and once again,
Black is going to win. White has seven liberties.
Dia. 5. White 1, 3, and 5 are three of the eight stones. White 7 and
Black 8 cancel.
Dia. 6. Now the position is reduced to the previous case and White
needs five more stones, including 9, to fill the eye. Black is one move
ahead.
Problem 1. White to play. This should come to a ko.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 is essential to keep Black from making a
big eye. After 2 to 5, a ko fight looms.
Dia. la. But as the continuation shows, it is a two-step ko in White's
favor. Black must ignore two ko threats, (for a and b), to win, while
White need ignore only one.
Dia. Ib. If White begins with, say, 1, and lets Black play 2, then how do
things stand? White needs five stones to fill the eye and Black has one
outside liberty—six moves in all. White also has six liberties, but he
loses outright because he has to make the empty triangle at 9.
Safety Plays.
Dia. 1. This situation looks deceptively simple; each side has four
liberties, so if White plays first he should be able to win with no trouble.
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Dia. 2. But if White starts with the hane at 1, which looks like the
logical way to trim down Black's liberties while giving his own four
stones more room. Black will make a throw-in at 2. After correct plays
at 3, 4, and 5, Black has managed to create a two-step ko. True, White
has the advantage in the ko fight, but it is a shame that he has to fight a
ko at all, since he had a sure-fire way to win.
Dia. 3. Straight out to the edge is the correct safety play. It does not
alter the number of anybody's liberties, but if Black attacks from the
left, i.e. 2 at 3, he has to make an empty triangle, while if he comes in
from the right, he has to make an approach play at a. White, therefore, is
one move ahead and wins the fight.
Dia. 4. Desperate attempts by Black to cause a ko do not succeed now.
Problem 1. Black to play and win for sure.
Problem 2. Black to play and win for sure.
Problem 3. White to play and win for sure.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the safety play. If Black plays 1 at 2,
then 2 at 1 makes a multi-step ko.
Answer to problem 2. This time a diagonal move is the safety play. If
Black plays 1 at a, White 1 makes a ko.
Answer to problem 3. White 1 is the safety play—empty triangles are
not always wrong. If White played 1 at 2, Black a followed by Black 5
would put him in a fix.
Two Hanes are Worth One Liberty
Dia. 1. This type of position turns up often enough to be worth knowing

about. Black's three stones have three liberties. So do the white stones
beneath them, but in spite of that, Black cannot win the fight. The two
white hanes, marked ©, give White an extra move.
Dia. 2. Black begins with 1, but White just answers at 2 and Black has
no continuation. If he plays 3, for instance, White captures and has three
liberties. White must not play 2 at 3, or there will be a ko.
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Dia. 3. This is the same position, except that now Black and White have
four liberties apiece. Once again, the two white hanes are worth an extra
move, and Black cannot win even if he goes first. Try it and see for
yourself.
Dia. 4. The principle that two hanes are worth an extra move usually
breaks down in the case of only two stones. Here Black plays a, White
b, Black c, and it is all over for White. Recall, however, the third
problems on pages 57 and 61.
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Answer to problem 1. White 3 threatens a double atari, and White leads
by one move.
Dia. 1a. Black cannot escape into the center.
Answer to problem 2. If Black plays 4 at 5, White a gives atari. If White
played 3 without exchanging 1 for 2, Black would answer at 4 and win.
Save the Ko for Last.
Dia. 1. Black and White have three outside liberties apiece, and there is
a ko between their two groups. Right now the ko is open on White's
side, giving him one more liberty, but this works to Black's advantage,
provided his turn is next.
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Dia. 2. Black begins by filling outside liberties with 1 and 3, and White
has to follow suit. Only when White 4 puts him into atari does Black
take the ko at 5. That puts White into atari, and he has to find the first ko
threat.
Dia. 3. If Black took the ko with 1, White would first play 2 and 4, then
retake with 6, and Black would have to find the first ko threat. In this
type of fight the outside liberties are potential ko material for either
player, so if you take the ko before the last possible moment, you let the
enemy fill outside liberties as his ko threat against you.
Dia. 4. After Black's mistake in Dia. 3, White would be making the
same mistake if he retook the ko before he was put in atari. The two
mistakes would cancel, and Black would get to make the first
meaningful ko capture.
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® cmnects
Answer to Problem 1. Besides saving the ko for last, Black has to mike
the throw-in at 1.
More Problems.
Only one of these review problems, number 3, involves ko.
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6. LINKING GROUPS TOGETHER
This chapter covers the main tesuji for Jinking friendly groups
together.
The Knight's-Move Tesuji.
Dia. 1. Black has a large gap to try to bridge on the left side. Beginners
tend to play a in this position, but then White comes through at b and
Black cannot link up.
Dia. 2. Black 1 is the right play. It is a knight's move away from each of
the two stones marked ⇒, and forms a link between them that White
cannot destroy. If White plays a, for example, Black cuts with b and
White a is dead.
Dia. 3. White can reduce Black's side territory slightly with 2, but Black
stays firmly linked together. White 2 and 4 should, of course, be saved
for the endgame.
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Dia. 4. At the very edge of the board, a longer knight's move is possible.
In this diagram Black needs to link up to save his two corner stones.
Dia. 5. Black 1, a large knight's move away from Black ⇒, is the tesuji.
Black a would work just as well. You should be able to verify that
Black's linkage is secure, but you may already know this move, since it
occurs as an endgame tesuji called the monkey jump.
Dia. 6. Surprisingly, the play at the center of symmetry fails in this case.
Problem 1. White to play and link up.
Problem 2. Black to play. Don't let the white stones cloud your
perception.
Problem 3. Black to play and link up.
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Answer to problem 1. The tesuji is the knight's move at 1. Black has an
atari at 2, but it does not help him.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 is the same knight's-move tesuji; it makes
2 and 3 miai. There seems to be danger of a ko from White a-b-c, but
Black has too many liberties for the ko to work.
Dia. 2a. If Black played this way, however, there would be a ko.
Answer to problem 3. This is the large knight's-move tesuji.
The Clamping Tesuji.
Dia. 1. White is in no position to cut at a, so he had better lower his

sights and satisfy himself with linking his eyeless corner stones to the
outside.
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Dia. 2. The move that does this for him is our old friend, the clamping
tesuji. Black should connect at 2, letting White link underneath at 3.
Dia. 3. If Black tries to resist, he only loses two stones. Black 2 and
White 3 are miai.
Dia. 4. Just for reference, this is the trouble that is in store for White if
he cuts.
Problem 2. White to play and link up.
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Answer to problem 1. Black clamps the enemy stone with 1, and White
has no choice but to connect at 2.
Dia. la. If he tries to resist, Black cuts him off with 3. This possibility
needs to be thought out, but after 4 and 5 White is behind, four liberties
to three, and cannot win.
Answer to problem 2. Again, the clamping tesuji does the job. White 1
at 2 would not.
Using Shortage of Liberties.
Dia. 1. If White could rescue his two stones on the left side, he would
win the black ones in the corner, too, but this is not so easy. If he tries to
push through at a, then Black b, White c, Black d, and White is in atari.
Fortunately Black, as well as White, is faced with shortage of liberties
here, so if White plays a move that threatens to link up while reducing
Black's liberties further ...
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Dia. 2. A hane is the tesuji here. Black is forced to let White link up.
Dia. 3. If he tries to block at 2, White will push through and cut with 3.
Black has one less liberty than before, and White 5 puts him in atari.
Dia. 4. White has to be careful not to play the wrong hane. If he starts
from this side then Black can block at 2, since 6 puts White in atari.
Problem 2. White to play and link up. The tesuji is a direct application
of shortage of liberties, but it is stranger than a hane.
Problem 3. Black to play and link up. He must start with a hane, but
which one?
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the correct bane. Rescuing the cutting
stones is very big for Black.
Answer to problem 2. White 1, a nose tesuji, is the key point. If White
started with, say, 2, Black would play 1 and White's chance would be
lost.
Answer to problem 3. Black may not make much territory out of this,
but at least he succeeds in linking two weak groups together.
Dia. 3a. Black can start the same kind of sequence from the other side,
but at the end White is threatening a, b, etc., and Black has failed.
Sacrifice Tesuji.
Sometimes a sacrifice is necessary to make the linkage go smoothly.
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Dia. 1. If White connects at a, Black will cut at c, and if White connects
at c, Black will cut at a, so it seems as if White must resign himself to
losing at least four stones. Fortunately there is a way out of this
dilemma.
Dia. 2. White 1 at the center of symmetry deals with both threatened
cuts. Now if Black plays a, White can answer at b, and if Black plays c,
White can answer at d.
Dia. 3. Black does best to capture with 2 and 4—this strengthens his
corner group—but while he is busy taking the sacrifice stone, White
connects at 3 and 5 and links up.
Problem 1. Black to play and link up. Which stones will become the
ones sacrificed?
Problem 2. White to play and link his two corner stones to the outside.
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Answer to problem 1. White picks up three stones while Black connects.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 is the sacrifice tesuji; this time the price
of linking up is two stones. Black can interchange 2 and 4, in which case
White will interchange 3 and 5.
Dia. 2a. Black 2 and 4 here are not so good, for now White links up in
sente. Black must make another move or face death on the lower side.
As before, if Black interchanges 2 and 4, White will interchange 3 and
5.
Dia. 2b. This White 1 is a failure. By refusing to sacrifice, White loses
the corner.
The Diagonal Tesuji.
Dia. 1. If Black could link up on the right side, he would not only save
his own stones but kill the corner as well.
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Dia. 2. The obvious-looking Black 1 quickly fails as White wedges in at
2.
Dia. 3. This position calls for the diagonal tesuji. It may be hard to
believe that Black 1 links anything to anything, and in fact it would not
work if White were not suffering from shortage of liberties, but he is
and it does.
Dia. 4. If White tries to be stubborn with 2, 4, and 6, he loses all his
stones. Now the reason why the diagonal tesuji works should be
becoming clearer.
Dia. 5. Against this White 2, Black links up by skipping down the side
to 3.
Problem 1. Black to play and link up on the right side.
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Answer to problem 1. After 2 and 3 Black is linked up and White is split
apart. If White played 2 at 3, Black would cut at 2 and capture three
stones.
More Problems.
The following problems involve variations and combinations of the

tesuji in this chapter. The object in each is to link up. In problem 5 be
sure not to lose the three cutting stones in the corner.
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7. CUTTING GROUPS APART
Cuttable and Uncuttable Shapes
This section looks at some common shapes of stones to see which

are safe from being cut through and which are not.
Dia. 1. The one-point jump, of which Black 1 is an example, is the most

often-made extension in the game. In general the enemy can cut it, just
by wedging into the space between the two stones, but it is not
profitable for him to do so. That is true in this diagram.
Dia. 2. If White wedges in at 1 and cuts at 5, he can indeed separate
Black's original two stones and capture the lower one of them. Black is
happy to give it up, however, for the end result favors him heavily.
Black could also play 2 at 3 and do equally well.
Since it is usually disadvantageous to try to cut a one-point jump, it is
easy to fall into the habit of thinking of all one-point jumps as
imcuttable, but that is a mistake.
Dia. 3. If the surrounding white positions became strengthened like this,
for example, White 1 would become effective. After the moves shown,
if Black connects at a White will cut at b, and vice versa, and the same
situation would arise if Black played 2 at 3. White has captured the
lower side.
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Dia. 4. While a one-point jump is basically a strong extension, a two-
point jump is basically frail, and provides an open invitation to the
opponent to cut.
Dia. 5. White 1 and 3 are the most aggressive cutting combination, with
3 at 4 and 3 at 5 being other possibilities. Of course when to cut, if at
all, and how to cut are questions to be answered by considering the
surrounding positions.
Dia. 6. A two-point jump from a two-stone wall is much stronger. In

this diagram Black's shape is uncuttable.
Dia. 7. This shows one unsuccessful attempt to cut.
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Dia. 8. But as usual, if the surrounding white positions were just a little
stronger, Black would be in danger.
Dia. 9. Whether a knight's move can be cut or not depends on a ladder.
Here both Black's and White's knight's moves are close enough to the
edge that the ladders work, and they are safe from being cut.
Dia. 10. If Black plays 1 and 3, for example, White can capture him in a
ladder with 4. The same thing would happen if White tried to cut at a.
Dia. 11. To push through with a diagonal move and try to cut is usually
bad. In this case, for instance, White 4 threatens both to capture Black 3
and to take apart the corner.
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Dia. 12. A dog's-neck extension like White 1, (a knight's move away
from both of the stones marked ⇓), is safe regardless of ladders or other
surrounding circumstances.
Dia. 13. Black 1 fails; White 2 makes a and b miai. As we shall see,
however, sometimes a move like 1 can be put to good use as a sacrifice.
Dia. 14. A horse's-neck extension like this White 1 may or may not be
safe. The danger point is a, or sometimes b, but as always, the value of
cutting, as well as the possibility of doing so, depends on the
surrounding positions.
In Dia. 12 observe that White could not have extended any farther than
he did.
Problem 1. Black to play. Where should he cut through White's line of
one-point jumps?
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Answer to problem 1. Black is well fortified both above and below 1,
and the whole side is his.
Dia. 1a. This Black 1 is wrong; after being cut, White can live on the
right side by pushing through at 6.
Cutting Through the Knight's Move.
Dia. 1. White seems to be linked together with two knight's moves on

the left side, but there is a defect in this shape. Black has a cutting tesuji,
in which the stone marked ⇒ plays an important role.
Dia. 2. Black offers 1 as a sacrifice, and if it is accepted, he can capture
the corner with 3 and 5. Notice that if Black ⇒ were not there, White
could play 4 at 5.
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Dia. 3. White should spurn the sacrifice and play 2, but his corner is
sealed in and there remains the possibility of a multi-step ko, starting
with Black a.
Dia. 4. The same kind of tesuji occurs in this position. Black has come
out into the center with a dog's-neck extension followed by a one-point
jump, but by sacrificing a stone in the former, White can cut through the
latter.
Dia. 5. This is the combination. Black may be able to live in ko with a,
but even if he does, White has scored a success by walling him in.
Problem 1. White to play. Where should he start his splitting operation?
Problem 2. Black to play and sever White's line.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 is correct, and it takes skillful play on
Black's part to live.
Dia. 1a. To start on the wrong side is to lose a move. White 1 helps
Black to live, and White ends in gote.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 is the tesuji. Black cuts through White's
line with 3 to 7, linking his own groups loosely together, and White still
needs to make a move to live on the lower side.
More Problems.
A few more miscellaneous splitting tesuji appear in these problems.

In all of them, the enemy has a line of stones to be cut through. In some
cases what is cut off will be dead, while in others it may be able to
struggle and live. In problem 6 a two-step tesuji combination is
necessary to cut effectively.
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8. INTO ENEMY TERRITORY
This chapter examines some tesuji for breaking into enemy territory
or, what amounts to the same thing, for activating stones that seem to
have died within enemy territory.
The Wedge Tesuji.
Dia. 1. There is a suspicious look to this medium-sized piece of white

territory; it is just loose enough around the edges to make one want to
hunt for a way into it. The uninspired Black a, White b, however, leads
nowhere.
Dia. 2. The next obvious move to try is the placement beside White's
cutting point—how about it? White could get into trouble if he
answered incorrectly, but if he plays 2, Black cannot do anything. This
failure, however, points the way to the correct tesuji.
Dia. 3. Since White 2 in Dia. 2 was the key point for defense, what
happens when Black wedges in there himself? Black 1 threatens
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to capture two stones with a. Against Black a, White could not connect
at b because of shortage of liberties.
Dia. 4. If White connects at 2 to keep Black from coming through there,
Black 3 and 5 capture the corner.
Dia. 5. Perhaps White's best response is to give atari at 2, then connect
at 4. Black 5 is necessary, and 6 and 7 become miai. White saves his
corner, while Black captures two stones in sente and eliminates the
possible cut at a.
Dia. 6. This is another variation with a similar result.
Problem 1. Black to play on the right side.
Problem 2. White to play in the corner.
Problem 3. Black to play. There seem to be two dead stones inside
White's territory, but the right tesuji will bring them to life.
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Answer to problem 1. White 4 and Black 5 are rniai.
Answer to problem 2, White 1 threatens White 4, and Black is quickly
forced to connect. After 5, White a will be sente, threatening b and a ko.
Answer to problem 3. After Black 1 White cannot connect at 3, and he
has to give up something.
The Belly Tesuji
Dia. 1. White's stone looks lost in the center of Black's territory, but
there is hope for it because of the cutting point at a. White cannot,
however, cut at a directly, as you can easily verify.
Dia. 2. What White can do is to play 1 at the belly of the two black
stones, threatening both to cut and to connect to the outside.
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Dia. 3. If Black blocks at 2, White cuts at 3 and a fight looms ahead.
White seems to be leading, four liberties to three.
Dia. 4. So Black resorts to a throw-in and forces a ko, (see problem 1),
but he is risking more this way than is White.
Dia. 5. If Black cannot fight the ko, he had better play 2 here and let
White link up.
Problem 1. Black to play. Suppose White connects at 1, instead of
playing 7 in Dia. 4—what happens?
Problem 2. White to play. Bearing the belly tesuji in mind, find his best
invasion point.
Problem 3. Black to play. He could run out at «, but he has something
else to try first.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1, 3, and 5 are correct. White is forced to
fight a multi-step ko.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 is correct. If Black blocks at 2, White has
the belly tesuji, and Black's eye space is being seriously threatened.
Answer to problem 3. Black 1 makes 2 and 3 miai, and Black captures
two cutting stones.
Dia. 3a. Serious complications await White if he tries to keep Black cut
off. He can live in the corner with 4 to 8, but then he faces trouble on
the outside.
The Placement Tesuji.
Dia. 1. This time Black's corner territory is the target. It looks

vulnerable since White has the possibility of coming out at a to work
with.
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Dia. 2. White cannot come out right away, or Black will chase him from
underneath and capture him. White 1, 3, and 5 become meaningless
sacrifices.
Dia. 3. But White has a placement tesuji at 1. It operates as a double-
threat move.
Dia. 4. If Black blocks at 2, then White can come out at 3. Of course
Black should not blunder ahead as shown—he should play 4 at 5 and
lose only two stones—but even that way his loss is big.
Dia. 5. If Black defends against Dia. 4, White can link up with 3.
Problem 1. White to play. He has a tesuji that threatens both to release
the two stones in the corner and to link up to the right.
Problem 2. White to play. By putting his dead stone to work he can
greatly reduce Black's corner.
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Answer to problem 1. If Black blocks the way to the right, White comes
out to 3, and as you have no doubt already verified, Black cannot play 4
at 5.
Dia. la. If Black protects the corner with 2, White can link up to the
right with 3. The linkage is not quite perfect, as Black 4 to 8 show, but
Black himself takes a risk in starting this ko fight. If he loses it, White's
position is greatly strengthened and a has become an atari.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 finds the right spot, and Black has to give
in with 2.
Dia. 2a If he tries to block, he loses everything.
More Problems.
In these problems you will find not only wedge and placement tesuji,
but squeeze, nose, diagonal, clamp, cross-cut, and throw-in tesuji.
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9. ESCAPE
This short chapter covers some techniques for breaking out into the
open. The most common tesuji are contact plays such as cuts and
wedges, and the second most common are one-point jumps.
Wedge and Cutting Tesuji.
Dia. 1. This is a variation of a common double kakari joseki in which

White makes some overplays. White 1, to surround the corner, is all
right, but if White really intends to hold Black in he must play either 3
or 7 differently—3 at a, for example.
Anyway, after 7 Black has a way to break through White's wall and get
out into the center so that his group can take an active part in the game.
Dia. 2. Black starts by wedging into the gap in the wall at 1. Dia. 3. If
White tries to hold him in with 2, he has a snap-back.
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Dia. 4. So White has to let him out. Perhaps he will take the ko at 2, but
then Black 3 threatens a and b, and White is put on the defensive.
Dia. 5. Black must not give atari at 1 and 3 before wedging in at 5, or
White will be able to answer at 6. That makes a and b miai, and Black
can no longer get out.
Problem 1. Black to play and escape.
Problem 2. A different tesuji: White to play and escape.
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Answer to problem 1. The wedge at 1 and atari at 3 are the tesuji
combination. If White plays 4 at 5, Black has a snap-back.
Answer to problem 2. White must cross-cut with 1. If he played 1 at 3,
Black 5 would capture at least four of his stones.
Dia. 2a. Black's strongest resistance is the atari at 2. Sometimes this
works, but here White has a fool-proof escape in the sequence through
11, and an even better one in 7 at 8 if he can stand 8 at 7 and the ko that
leads to.
Dia. 2b. This is a variation in the previous sequence. Black 4 leads only
to failure.
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The One-Point Jump Tesuji
Dia. 1. White's one-point jump to 1 is a well-known tesuji for getting

out into the center. A non-jumping play would fail: White a, Black b,
for example.
Dia. 2. If Black tries to cut with 2 and 4, he loses three stones to the
right. Observe that White jumped out to the left in Dia. 1, the side away
from the weakness in Black's position that made the tesuji work.
Dia. 3. If Black is going to answer White 1 at all he should play the
slapping tesuji in this diagram, which may have some forcing value,
although it fills one of Black's own liberties on the left.
Problem 1. Black to play and escape.
Problem 2. White to play and escape.
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Answer to problem 1. Since White 2 etc. fail, White should play 2 at 4.
Black 1 at 4 would not work.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 is the tesuji. Black's clamping move at 2
loses to White 3, 5, and 7. If Black connects after 7, White will drive out
to the left, endangering the black stones on the upper side.
Dia. 2a. The problem comes from this three-three point invasion of the
corner. Since Black 16 does not capture the two white stones, Black's
whole idea of blocking at 2 is incorrect.
If Black plays 14 at IS in this sequence and tries to kill the corner, then
White 14, Black a, White b, Black c, White d, and because of the stone
marked ⇓ Black cannot win the fight. The best he can do from there is to
live on the upper side and let White live in the corner. The details are
left to you as a problem.
Dia. 2b. Accordingly, Black should play 2 on this side and follow a
variation such as the one shown.
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More Problems.
These problems feature wedge, cutting, one-point jump, and other

tesuji.
Numbers 2 and 7 involve ko. Number 5 could be called an escape-or-
live problem.
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10. SACRIFICE TO GAIN TEMPO
Cutting into the Knight's Move
Dia. 1. White is threatening to cut at both a and b and Black is in

trouble. If he connects at a and lets White have the corner with 6, his
own group will be drifting without eye shape, while White's two groups
will be linked up.
Dia. 2. But if he connects at 1, White will force him again with 2, and if
he connects at 3 he will only be giving away more stones. He needs to
find a way to connect at 1 in sente.
Dia. 3. The tesuji that enables him to do so is 1 in this diagram, cutting

into White's knight's move. It is a sacrifice, but it must be answered,
because it threatens the white stone it touches.
Dia. 4. While White is capturing with 2, 4, and 6 Black is able to
connect at 3 and 5 in sente, then connect again at 7. Now his stones are
all linked together and he has one eye.
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Dia. 5. Another example: here Black wants to seal White into the comer
and make territory on the upper side. There are three moves to be
considered in this shape, but the first of them, Black a, can be quickly
rejected because of White's answer at b.
Dia. 6. That leads to considering Black 1, the second possible move. It
seals White in, all right, but Black is not yet taking full advantage of the
position.
Dia. 7. The third possible move is the best. Black offers a sacrifice at 1
—this keeps White from playing 2 in Dia. 6—and continues with 3 and
5. If White captures after 5, Black has sente. If White does not capture,
Black is much better off than he was in Dia. 6. White may try 2 at 4, but
Black can play 3 and 5 just the same.
Problem 1. Black to play and live.
Problem 2. White to play and make good, solid territory on the lower
side.
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Answer to problem 1. Black must sacrifice to connect in sente.
Answer to problem 2. If White played 1 at 3, then Black 1, White 5, and
White would have to worry about being cut at the point 7 or clamped at
the right of 5.
Cutting to Gain Tempo.
Dia. 1. With 1, Black can keep the pair of white stones from escaping
into the center, but White can link himself to the corner with 2. Black
needs to prevent this link-up before playing 1.
Dia. 2. The tesuji is the sacrifice at 1. Black 3 completes the

preparations, and now Black 5 captures White's two stones.
Dia. 3. White 6 is met by Black 7, and White cannot link up. His correct
move is to abandon the pair of stones on the outside and play 6 at 7.
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Dia. 4. If White tries to keep his escape route open by answering 1 with
2, Black fattens the sacrifice and seals him in tighter.
Dia. 5. Perhaps White will choose to ignore Black 1 and run out at 2.
Then Black can take the corner territory and get secure eye shape with
3, and still chase the weak escaping stones.
Dia. 6. This Black 1 is a pitfall for the unwary. It looks like a tesuji, but
it has no effect if White connects properly.
Problem 1. White to play and break up the left side.
Problem 2. Black to play and keep White separated.
Problem 3. Black to play. The four white stones seem to be able to save
themselves at either a or b; what can Black do about this?
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Answer to problem 1. The sacrifice at 1 makes 3 an atari, (if White
played 3 without 1 Black would answer at 5), and Black is barely able to
live in gote.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 and 3 are the only way.
Answer to problem 3. After 5, if White plays a, Black can answer at b. If
White played 4 at b, Black a would put him in atari, again giving Black
time to play 5.
More Problems.
These problems call for sacrifices of various kinds.
1. White to develop on the left side.

2. Black to defend the corner.
3. White to shut Black in.
4. Black to keep White separated.
5. White to defend both cutting points, a and b.
6. Black to capture the cutting stone.
7. Black to break up the white group on the left and take care of his
center.
8. Timing is important in this one.
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Notes
Problem 1. White 7 promises an atari at a, but depending on the

surrounding positions, 7 at b might be correct.
Problem 2. After 6, Black a would be very big, since White could not
answer at b.
Problem 3. Notice the squeeze coming at a.
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11. TESUJI FOR ATTACK
To attack an enemy group is not usually to destroy it, but to shut it in
forcibly, or to snatch away its eye space and send it running into the
center; in other words, to make the enemy defend it while you develop
your own positions.
The Eye-Stealing Tesuji.
Dia. 1. This position might arise in a handicap game. Black has a move
that will strengthen his two stones on the right side while very nearly
killing the white group in the corner.
Dia. 2. Black 1 is the mighty move. It is called the eye-stealing tesuji

because in conjunction with Black ⇒ it makes the potential eye at a
false.
Dia. 3. How should White answer Black 1 ? He cannot capture it: after
Black 3 he is barred from a by shortage of liberties, and worse yet,
Black is threatening a snap-back.
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Dia. 4. If he crawls toward the corner with 2, Black looses a second eye-
stealing tesuji on him at 3.
Dia. 5. While White lives with 4, Black captures his valuable cutting
stones with 5. White cannot connect after 7 because of shortage of
liberties.
Dia. 6. White's best response is to save his whole group with 2, but he
becomes tightly confined. Black has made a good start on eye shape for
himself, since a is his sente.
Problem 2. White to play on the right side.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1, with White ⇓, forms the eye-stealing
tesuji. If Black answers at 2 White can link underneath at 3, leaving
Black with no eye space and the threat of a to worry about.
Dia. la. If Black plays 2 to keep White from linking up there, White's
attack becomes even stronger. Or if Black played 2 at a, White could
answer at b.
Dia. 1b. Cutting at 1 does not gain very much.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 is the eye-stealing tesuji. White is
developing his own group while limiting Black to one eye in the corner.
Answer to problem 3. Black 1 is the eye-stealing tesuji, and 3 is a strong
follow-up move. White is in trouble.
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The Placement Tesuji.
Dia. I. Black may not be able to capture the white group, but he can
certainly put it on the run. He has a tesuji that will take away all its eye
space on the left edge.
Dia. 2. Black 1 hits the right point. If White connects at 2, Black can
link up to his corner with 3; White cannot stop him with 4 at a because
of Black b. White's eye space is gone, and he is forced to run away.
Dia. 3. If White plays 2 this way then Black, rather take a couple of
stones in gote, (Black 4, White 3), should draw back, getting essentially
the same result as before.
Problem 1. White to play on the upper side.
Problem 2. Black to play in the corner.
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Answer to problem 1. White 1 earns a large profit on the upper side
while leaving Black with uncertain eye shape.
Answer to problem 2. Black 1 and 3 are a tesuji combination that forces
White to leave three of his stones in hock-while making a small life.
Dia. 2a. White fares even worse if he plays this way.
Dia. 2b. White has this variation, but it risks Black a, White b Black c,
and a life-or-death ko fight.
Draw Back to Capture.
Dia. 1. The eye-stealing tesuji at 1 compels White to connect at 2, and

Black is on the attack. The question is what his next move should be.
145
Dia. 2. If he makes the hane at 3, White will start crawling with 4, and it
will not be very easy to stop him. If Black tries to play a after 6, White
may well be able to cut at b, or failing that, at least he can clamp a with
c and continue his flight.
Dia. 3. The solution is to draw back a space. This is a kind of placement
tesuji.
Dia. 4. Black answers 4 with 5, 6 with 7, 8 with 9, and that is all the
further White can get. His group is dead.
Problem 1. White to play and capture.
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Answer to problem 1. After 9 Black can neither escape, live, nor
capture any of the white stones surrounding him.
The Double Hane Tesuji.
Dia. 1. White cannot do anything to threaten Black's eye shape in this

position, but he has a way of shutting him in tightly on the lower side.
Dia. 2. The tesuji starts with White 1, a hane, and continues with
White 3, a second hane.
147
Dia. 3. White is leaving himself open to Black 4 and 6, which capture
one of his stones, but he can do that because he has a double atari at 7.
Dia. 4. The double hane tesuji always brings with it the possibility of an
exchange like this, and sometimes the exchange variation is the enemy's
best choice. Here, however, it seems to favor White by quite a bit.
Dia. 5. So Black had better connect at 4 and let White do likewise at 5.
White keeps sente because Black has to make yet another defensive
move at 6.
Problem 1. Black to play and attack, forcing White to choose between
giving up the corner and being tightly shut in.
Problem 2. White to play and close off the left side. In this double hane
tesuji, the first move is not a hane.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 and 3 are the double hane. Black can play
7 even if the ladder is broken, since after 8 and 9, White has to play 10
to live in the corner.
Dia. la. The exchange variation gives White good shape on the outside,
but the loss of the corner is big.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 and 3 form the double hane tesuji, even if
1 is a nose play, not a hane, and White gets an excellent position. After
7 the pair of white stones in the corner are dead, but as an interesting
problem, how must Black answer if White plays a?
Dia. 2a. The exchange variation, (6 at a), is not a good idea, but Black
may want to play 4 to give himself something to work with on the
outside. This would be especially true if the ladder were broken and
White had to play 9 at a.
Dia. 2b. If the ladder were broken and White were weak in the
surrounding area, he would have to forego the double hane and play this
way instead.
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The Eye-Stealing Clamping Tesuji.
Dia. 1. Can you find the right attacking move for White in this position?
To give atari at a would only be to help Black make two eyes.
Dia. 2. And to draw out of atari like this would be a worse mistake,
doing more harm to friend than to foe. White must be more subtle.
Dia. 3. White 1, which makes Black's potential eye at ⇓ false, is the eye-
stealing clamping tesuji. Once you see it, its power is obvious.
Dia. 4. Black captures with 2, but White 3 keeps him from escaping,
and he is hard pressed to come up with two eyes. Ko, with 4, 6, and 8, is
his best bet.
Problem 1. Black to play. Although he cannot kill the corner, he can
seal it in on both sides.
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Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the tesuji.
Dia. la. If White comes cut of atari. Black connects at 3, threatening
both a and b.
Dia. Ib. This Black 1 gives White more corner territory than before, and
fails to seal him in on the lower side. There is also the danger of White's
playing 2 at 4, followed by Black 2, White 3, and a ko fight.
More Problems.
The objectives of the attacks to be made are as follows:
Problem 1. To close off the right side.

Problem 2. To capture at least part of the enemy group.
Problem 3. // // // //
Problem 4. // // // //
Problem 5. To gain the upper hand on the right side.
Problem 6. To gain profit in sente.
Problem 7. To put the enemy on the run.
Problem 8. To kill the corner.
Problem 9. To seal the enemy incompletely. (Try a big sacrifice).
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152
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The Diagonal Connection.
Dia. 1. Although it lacks the clean lines of a solid connection, a

diagonal connection is more developmental and is often correct. Here,
for example, Black 1 reaches farther out into the center than a solid
connection would, and prepares for subsequent extensions to a, b, etc.
This outweighs the disadvantage of giving White c, a move which
would not really add much to his position.
Dia. 2. The solid connection is not too bad, but it does not move Black
forward enough.
Dia. 3. This is an obscure variation of a popular pincer joseki. Since
Black 5 threatens Black a, White b, Black c, which would be ruinous,
White has to answer with some kind of connection in the corner. What
move would you choose?
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12. HOW TO CONNECT
Connecting properly is an important part of good go technique. This
chapter covers the basic moves involved: all of the problems, for a
change, are collected at the end.
Connections are defensive moves, but they also serve to develop one's
positions. The principle in connecting is to choose the connection that
develops the most while still being strong enough to defend adequately.
The Solid Connection.
Dia. 1. A solid connection, such as Black 1, is the least developmental,

but has the advantage that there is no way for the enemy to monkey with
it. In this position it gives Black a clean, strong shape with no
significant weaknesses: if White cuts at a, Black can capture him with
b.
Dia. 2. A double diagonal connection like this one is more efficient, in a

way, because it defends two cutting points at once, but unfortunately it
lets White play 2 and 4 and in effect get two free moves while forcing
Black to connect three times. The added efficiency of a diagonal
connection must always be weighed against the value of the forcing
moves it gives the enemy.
Dia. 3. This would be the wrong solid connection, since it would leave
White a and b to aim at.
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Dia. 2. The solid connection is worth considering, but as a means either
of surrounding potential territory or developing eye shape it is inferior
to the knight's move.
Dia. 3. The diagonal connection would be followed automatically by 2
and 3. Clearly Black would now rather have 1 at a, which is where it
would be if he had made the knight's-move connection.
The knight's-move connection is thus even more developmental than the
diagonal connection, but it should not be used too freely because of its
inherent looseness. It is best suited to positions like the one shown,
where two solid walls meet at right angles. The walls are strong, so the
connection need not be.
The Eye-Protecting Tesuji.
Dia. 1. This connection could be looked at as the eye-stealing tesuji in

reverse, and it is a vital move to know. It would be unthinkable for
White to make any other connection in this position.
Dia. 2. The diagonal connection, for example, would give Black a free
move at 2, (the eye-stealing tesuji), which would help him greatly in
developing his center stones.
Dia. 3. The solid connection would fail to give White any shape,
making an unnecessary empty triangle.
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Dia. 4. The diagonal connection is best. One reason is that it gives
White a good eye-making next move at a.
Dia. 5. If Black follows the joseki by playing 2 and 4 to take possession
of the eye space in the corner, White will jump out to 5, then attack at 7.
The isolated black stone faces a solid wall. If Black uses 6 on the right
side to forestall 7, White can shut him in on the lower side with a.
Dia. 6. This White 1 is wrong. Suppose for comparison that 2, 3, and
4 are played as they were in Dia. 5. Now when White attacks at 5,
Black has an eye-stealing tesuji at 6. White 1 in Dia. 4 prevented that
move. The Knight's-Move Connection.
Dia. 1. Occasionally the chance to make this knight's-move connection
arises—it is standard in the joseki position shown. If White cuts at a,
Black can ladder him with either b or c.
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Connecting Indirectly.
Dia. 1. Sometimes it is possible to keep the enemy from cutting by

threatening him with shortage of liberties. Black 1 is such a tesuji; it
attacks and defends simultaneously.
Dia. 2. If White tries to cut, he runs into a snap-back. Dia. 3. The

'honest' connection has no offensive potential, and leaves White able to
play 2.
Problems.
Now exercise your judgement and choose the connection to be made

in each of the following positions.
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160
Answer to problem 1. The eye-protecting tesuji is essential.
Dia. la. If Black tries to connect indirectly with 1, White 2 to 6 will
destroy his shape.
Answer to problem 2. The diagonal connection is clearly best. Black
would get practically nothing out of a forcing move at a, which he
should not play.
Answer to problem 3. The diagonal connection is best. The benefit to
White in reaching one line farther up the side outweighs the benefit
Black gets from 2.
Answer to problem 4. Again the diagonal connection is best.
Dia. 4a. The solid connection is inferior for two reasons: it does not
reach as far up the side, and if Black cuts and captures with 2 and 4,
White must worry about a further cut at a or clamp at b.
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Answer to problem 5. The solid connection at I, empty triangle and all,
is correct. Black must play 2 and 4 to live in the corner, and White gets
a good development on both sides.
Dia. 5a. This solid connection is wrong because it gives Black harmful
forcing moves at 2 and 4.
Dia. 5b. This diagonal connection is the second best move, because of
the danger that Black will eventually be able to pick up a stone with a.
Answer to problem 6. White 1 is by far the best move. After 2 and 3,
White has a to look forward to.
Dia. 6a. This White 1 gives Black better shape than in the answer
diagram, and White has nothing to look forward to.
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Answer to problem 7. The patient, solid connection is best. Later on
Black can, perhaps, play a. If White answers at b, Black c threatens an
atari and a capture; c is an important point for Black.
Dia. la. This Black 1 gives White a forcing move at 2. Now White's
position is much stronger, and all Black can do later is to capture at a in
gote.
Dia. 7b. Here is the whole joseki; a is another weak point that Black has
his eye on.
Answer to problem 8. Black 1 is, of course, correct. If White cuts at a,
Black can capture him with b.
Dia. 8a. This Black 1 is too clever. It gives White a good way to start
developing on the lower side.
Answer to problem 9. Black 1 is correct, since White a would not
threaten anything.
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Dia. 9a. There is no reason for Black to make the diagonal connection
and let White close off the right side.
Dia. 9b. The problem comes from this joseki.
Answer to problem 10. The knight's-move connection is safe here, and
gives Black the best development.
Answer to problem 11. Black 1 defends against the cut at a while taking
a head start in the center fighting.
Answer to problem 12. Both from the standpoint of defending white
territory and of undermining black territory, 1 is the best move. If Black
responds at a, White can ignore him and take sente elsewhere without
risking too much.
Dia. 12a. If White connects this way, Black 2 becomes harder to ignore.
Black can use the 2-3 exchange to create shortage of liberties, then shut
White in tightly with 4.
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13. MAKING SHAPE
To make shape is to take a weak or defective position—perhaps only the
sketchy outline of a position—and transform it into a strong one.
Sometimes this can be done just by putting one stone down in the right
place, but usually it takes sacrifice tactics, such as squeezing maneuvers.
Squeeze Tactics
Dia. 1. White to play: he needs to defend the corner, but he can take
the offensive, too.
Dia. 2. White 1, a squeeze tesuji, will give White good shape and Black
bad.
Dia. 3. Black is compelled to fill in dead space with 2, 4, and 6 while
White stretches taut against him, attacking the group to the left and
isolating the stone to the right. It does not matter that neither of them is
definitely captured as long as White is developing as beautifully as this.
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Dia. 4. This time it is Black's turn to come up with a squeeze tesuji.
Black ⇒ must go; what can Black gain from sacrificing it? Black a,
White b would leave him with just as many weaknesses as he has now,
and simply to connect at c, although better, would be too easy on White.
Dia. 5. Black should stan by exchanging 1 for 2, adding one liberty to
the group he is about to give up.
Dia. 6. White has to use three stones to capture, so Black gets to make
three moves in sente around the outside. Connecting at 9, he has
completely solidified his own shape and is looking daggers at the pair of
white stones to the right.
Problem 1. White to play and improve his shape.
Problem 2. Black to play. He would like to attack at a, but first he has to
tidy up the lower side.
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Answer to problem 1. White strengthens his shape in sente. If he failed
to make these plays, Black would have a good point at 3.
Answer to problem 2. Black has to sacrifice two stones to make the
squeeze effective.
The Counter-Hane Tesuji.
Dia. 1. White has invaded at 1, and since Black 2 leaves him no

resources in the downward direction, he extends upward with 3. In
general, contact extensions like 3 are bad because they strengthen the
enemy, but White is fighting at a disadvantage and cannot afford to
worry about such relatively minor issues. The important thing is to
develop some shape for himself.
167
Black's hane at 4 invites White a, Black b, White c, and a ko fight, but
White can steer clear of that danger with the counter-hane tesuji at 5.
Dia. 2. Of course Black can give atari and capture with 6 and 8, but then
White captures a stone in a ladder with 9 and 11. He is also making
progress on the right edge, for he has an eye with a and b.
Dia. 3. If the ladder does not work, White still has squeeze plays at 13
and 15, and can run away with 17.
Dia. 4. This Black 6 and 8 give White an easy life in the corner. Dia.
5. If Black plays his hane from underneath, White has a similar
counter-hane tesuji at 3. Problem 1. White to make shape on the lower
side.
168
Answer to problem 1. White 1 forces 2, and 3 is the counter-hane tesuji.
However Black answers it, White can find a way to make shape.
White has other choices for 1 that may be good, too, but the way of the
answer diagram gets him settled the fastest.
The Cross-Cut Tesuji.
Dia. 1. White 1 is a standard invasion to make into a double wing

formation around a knight's-move corner enclosure. After 2, White must
make shape. White 3 and the cross-cut at 5 are a very effective tesuji
combination for doing that.
The next two diagrams will show two standard continuations, but
first a warning: before White plays 3, he must make sure that the ladder
that would come from Black 4 at a, White b, Black c, White d works for
him, or he will be in trouble.
Dia. 2. Variation one: Black uses three moves to capture one
169
sacrifice stone, so White gets to build himself up with three moves on
the outside. For White 11, faster but looser escaping moves like a are
available, too.
Dia. 3. Variation two: Black captures immediately with 8. Now White
sacrifices another stone to make good shape. If Black tries to play 12 at
13 and spoil White's shape. ...
Dia. 4. White pulls more sacrifice tricks on him and rips apart the right
side.
Problem 1. White to make shape on the left side.
Problem 2. Black to strengthen his group. If this operation goes
properly, it should see the sacrifice of two stones.
170
Answer to problem 1. White 1 is correct, and 3 is the cross-cut tesuji.
White 9 and 11 are nice, making shape while leaving Black with the
weak point at a.
Dia. la. Black may actually prefer this variation.
Dia. Ib. If Black plays 2 here, White has a beautiful squeeze
combination in 5 and 7.
Dia. Ic. The continuation from Dia. Ib.
Answer to problem 2. Black should have no future worries about eyes.
171
The Driving Tesuji.
Dia. 1. This position could only arise due to a misplay on Black's part,
for White is about to smite him with the driving tesuji. So effective is
this tesuji that the opportunity to use it rarely occurs against an
experienced opponent, who can see it coming and take steps to avoid it.
Dia. 2. White drives Black upward with 1, then blocks him with 3. If
Black now gives atari at a, White b will squeeze him.
Dia. 3. So Black allows himself to be driven to the right, but for White
this sequence has been a magnificent success. Starting from three
scattered stones, he has gotten a living shape in the corner, put his head
out into the center, weakened the black group on the left side, and
twisted the one on the lower side into a constricted shape.
Problem 1. Black to play and make shape on the lower side.
Problem 2. White to play. Both of these problems arise from opponent's
mistakes.
172
Answer to problem 1. After the driving tesuji, Black 7 is the key point.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 starts the driving tesuji. White 9 is one
good way to finish it, although not a necessary part of the sequence.
The Attachment Tesuji.
Dia. 1. The attachment tesuji works by threatening the driving tesuji or

some similar driving maneuver. It arises in this diagram when Black
draws back at 2. White, looking for a fight, plays the bane at 3, inviting
Black to cut at 4. White 5 is the attachment tesuji.
Dia. 2. If Black defends at 6, White drives him around with 7 etc.,
getting a good springboard from which to extend into the center and
undermining the lower left corner.
173
Dia. 3. Rather than try to defend the corner and fail as in the last
diagram, Black should play 6 to deprive White of the chance to give
atari there. But White now has a headstart and can develop nicely with 7
to 11. Later, Black can capture one stone in sente on the lower side, but
he should postpone doing so until he can decide which of the two
possible stones to capture.
Dia. 4. There are other variations, like this one, but no matter what
Black does, White will have no trouble developing a position.
Problem 1. Black tg play and make shape on the upper side.
Problem 2. White to play and make shape in the upper right.
174
Answer to problem 1. Black 1 threatens the driving tesuji, as in problem
1 of the previous section. White's best reply is 2 and Black's best
continuation is 3.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 threatens a ladder. Black should answer
at 2, letting White take over one of his stones with 3.
Using Dead Stones.
Dia. 1. When Black pushes through with 1 and cuts with 3, the stone
marked ⇓ is captured, so the question becomes how White can make use
of it to gain momentum on the outside. The atari at 4 is generally the
right way to start.
Dia. 2. And in this case White 6, an attachment tesuji that threatens a, is

the right way to continue.
Dia. 3. If Black grips the white stone with 7, as he should, White can
develop with 8 and 10.
175
Dia. 4. If Black tries to offer resistance with 7 and 9, he will just get into
trouble. White's counter-atari at 10 is a squeeze tesuji.
Dia. 5. Continuing, White drives right through Black's corner enclosure.
Black keeps very little corner territory, since White has a.
Dia. 6. To go back to the beginning, Black 1 and 3 in Dia. 1 did not turn
out very well. This diagram shows a better idea.
Problem 1. Black to play. He can eliminate all his weaknesses on the
lower side and in the corner.
Problem 2. A joseki. How should Black use the dead stone 3?
176
Answer to problem 1. Black 1 threatens Black 2. After this sequence,
White may as well forget about the two stones above 3.
Answer to problem 2. Black 3 threatens a. White kills a black stone in
the corner, and Black kills a white stone on the outside.
Hitting Under and Hitting on Top.
Dia. 1. White's four stones in this diagram have become insecure—

Black could play a or b with impunity—and before anything serious
starts to happen to them, White should strengthen their shape. White 1,
hitting under the opposing black stone, is a sacrifice tesuji, (another
attachment tesuji), for doing that.
Dia. 2. While Black is busy capturing the sacrifice stone White is is
reinforcing his position in sente. White 7 defends the lower edge, and 3
and 5 are valuable, too.
177
This sequence has its variations: Black might consider omitting 8 to
take sente; in some circumstances, (not here), he can crawl forward with
4 at 7; and in some other circumstances he has to play 2 at 4 or 6, in
which case White's tesuji is no longer a sacrifice.
Dia. 3. At any rate, to continue from Dia. 2, White has not only
developed at the edge, he has paved the way for 9 and 11, which reduce
Black's territory and make shape in the center.
Dia. 4. White 1, hitting on top of the opposing black stone, is a similar
tesuji, although it aims mostly at helping White into the center. The
common variations here are Black 2 at 4 and Black 4 at a.
Problem 1. Black to play and strengthen his group. Can you see what
White's response will be?
Problem 2. White to play and strengthen his group. Should he hit under,
or hit on top?
178
Answer to problem 1. White has to give in at 2, and if he does not also
defend at 4, there is Black a. Black has gained both territory and eye
space.
Dia. la. White cannot play this way, except in very special circum-
stances where he thinks he can kill the black group.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 works well with the stone marked ©, and
Black has to play 2 as shown. Besides strengthening himself, White is
reducing Black's territory in sente.
More Problems
In each of these problems the object is to make shape. Some of them,
like numbers 4 and 5, are extremely simple. In number 6 White is to
make shape in the center, and in number 7 he is to make shape on the
right side. If you find any ladders in number 9, assume they work.
179
180
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182
14. IGNORE THE ATARI
Some go players' reading seems to be dominated by the idea of atari;
they give it whenever they can and draw out of it whenever they find
themselves in it. They are always getting side-tracked by the fates jf
individual stones and missing tesuji.
When Not to Give Atari.
Dia. 1. White to play; what should he do in this shape? He has two

standard moves, one for offense and one for defense, and neither of
them is an atari.
Dia. 2. If White is well enough supported in the surrounding area, he

can attack. To do so with 1, however, betrays clumsiness. White 1 does
not help his cause very much, and 2 helps Black's cause by quite a bit.
Black a is starting to look interesting.
Dia. 3. The correct play is this attachment tesuji, which threatens the
driving tesuji. Now if Black plays 2, White has a strong move of bis
own at 3.
183
Dia. 4. Perhaps defense, not attack, is White's aim; to give atari with 1 is
still clumsy. Black 2 is the last move he should want to provoke, since it
kills off the stone marked ⇓. Furthermore, White has to go back and
connect at 3, ending in gote.
Dia. 5. White 1 is correct. Now if Black plays 2, White has sente to take
the initiative elsewhere, or if he wants to continue in this area, he can
play 3 at a—compare that with the previous diagram. If Black ignores
White 1, White has a ladder at 2.
Dia. 6. If Black presses out with 2, White can press him back with a
double hane, putting ⇓ to work.
Problem 1. Black to answer White 1.
Problem 2. White to answer Black 1. Beware of the Greeks bearing
gifts.
Problem 3. A joseki: Black to answer White 5.
184
Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is correct. Next Black threatens a.
Answer to problem 2. With 1, White is safe.
Dia. 2a. This White 1, or White 1 at 3, lets Black make a ko.
Answer to problem 3. Black must connect at 1. Later, he can cut at a if
he wishes.
Dia. 3a. To cut at 1 immediately is only to help White get eyes, and
after 4, the threat of White a, Black b, White c continues to be a
nuisance to Black.
Dia. 3b. This atari also helps White to make shape. Since Black has to
connect at 3 anyway, there is no point in his strengthening White with
the 1-2 exchange.
The Counter-Atari Tesuji.
Dia. 1. White 1 is a common move for starting trouble on the right side.
Black 2 is a good answer, but now Black faces the atari at 3. Should he
draw out if it?
185
Dia. 2. No, for after the obvious moves at 2 and 4 White has good
shape, Black has bad, and White ⇓ is still going to be a thorn in Black's
side.
Dia. 3. Black's tesuji is the counter-atari at 1. White will probably play 2
and 4 just as he did before, and now Black has excellent shape.
Dia. 4. If White captures at 2, Black can play 3 to 9 and trap the whole
enemy group.
Problem 1. Black to answer White 1.
Problem 2. Black 1 to 7 are a standard invading sequence. What should
White's next two moves be?
186
Answer to problem 1. Black must not play 1 at 3, or White 2 at 1 will
cause a ko.
Answer to problem 2. White 1 and 3 hold Black in.
Dia. 2a. Continuing from the last diagram, Black can live with 4 to 16
—that much he is entitled to—but White gets a strong outer wall in
return, a fair trade.
Dia. 2b. If White draws out of atari, he can save the side, but tiis corner
will be in sad shape.
More Problems.
These problems feature both attack and defense, the unifying idea
sing to resist the temptation to give or draw out of atari.
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188
189
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15. DOUBLE-THREAT TESUJI
A double-threat tesuji works by aiming at following moves in two
directions.
Dia. 1. White 1 is a good example. The move itself does not look like
much, but it prepares for a large following move either in the corner or
out to the right, and Black cannot defend both places.
Dia. 2. If he defends the corner, White can spring out to 5. Black cannot
break the link between the white stones.
Dia. 3. If Black stops the extension to the right, White can get profit and
eye shape in the corner.
Dia. 4. The position arises midway through this joseki. It is often :orrect
for White to stop after Black 4, instead of continuing with i and 7, so as
to leave himself the possiblity of the above.
The nine problems of this chapter feature hane, belly, diagonal, ;nd
other moves, but each is a double-threat tesuji.
191
192
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16. CHALLENGE PROBLEMS
Are you tired of solving problems? If you are, then put this book
iway for awhile and take a well-deserved rest, but when you have
•ecovered your appetite, come back and try this last batch of hard ones.
Problem 1. White to capture at least one black stone,

Problem 2. Black to capture the cutting stones,
Problem 4. White to kill the corner.
Problem 5. Black to capture the cutting stones,
Problem 6. White to capture the cutting stones,
Problem 7. White to capture the cutting stones,
Problem 8. Black to capture the cutting stones.
Problem 9. Black to rescue his six stones,
Problem 10. Black to live,
Problem 11. Black to capture the cutting stones.
195
196
197
198
199
Hie Kiseido GET STRONG AT GO SERIES
A series of problem books covering every phase of the game from
the opening to the endgame. Each book contains 200 or more problems
ranging in difficulty from elementary to advanced. Thus, they can be
used by players ranging in strength from 20-kyu to dan-level. By
studying go in this problem format, you will not only learn basic
principles as to why moves are made but also train yourself in thinking
through and analyzing positions. You also will encounter a great many
of the same or similar patterns that will arise in your own games.
We guarantee that diligent study of this entire series will lay the
foundation for becoming a truly strong player The following tides are
available or in preparation. Others to follow:
K51: Get Strong at the Opening (In preparation)

K52: Get Strong at Joseki I
K53: Get Strong at Joseki II
K54: Get Strong at Joseki in
K55: Get Strong at Invading
K56: Get Strong at Ko (In preparation)
K57: Get Strong at Handicap Go (In preparation)
Other Books on Go Availble from Kiseido

Introductory
The Magic of Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game of Go

by Cho Chikun
The Go Player's Almanac, by Richard Bozulich
Go: An Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy, by Miura
Yasuyuki
200
Elementary Go Series
Volume 1: In the Beginning, by Ishigure Ikuro

Volume 2: 38 Basic Joseki, by Kosugi Kiyoshi
Volume 3: Tesuji, by James Davies
Volume 4: Life & Death, by James Davies
Volume 5: Attack & Defense, by Ishida Akira and James Davies
Volume 6: Endgame, by Ogawa Tomoko and James Davies
Volume 7: Handicap Go, by Nagahara Yoshiaki and Bozulich
Elementary Books
The Second Book of Go, by Richard Bozulich Basic Techniques of Go,

by Nagahara and Haruyama Opening Theory Made Easy, by Otake
Hideo
Intermediate Books
Strategic Concepts of Go, by Nagahara

The 3-3 Point (Modern Opening Strategy), by Cho Chikun
Appreciating Famous Games, by Ohira Shuzo
Advanced Books
Dictionary of Basic Joseki, Vol. 1, by Ishida Yoshio

Go World A quarterly magazine covering the world Go tournament

scene.
A free catalog of books and Go equipment is available by writing to:
Kiseido Publishing Company CPO Box 2126, Tokyo, Japan; FAX +81-
467-83-4710 USA: Kiseido, 454 Las Gallinas Ave., #255, San Rafael,
CA 94903-3618; Tel; 415-499-1543; e-mail: kiseido@crl.com Europe:
Schaak en Gowinkel het Paard, Haarlemmerdijk 147, 1013 KH
Amsterdam; Tel: +31-20-624-1171; FAX+31-20-627-0885
201
TESUJI
Tesujis are the tactics of short range combat in the game of go. This
volume presents over three hundred examples and problems of them,
aimed at training the reader to read and spot the right play in all sorts of
tactical situations. It covers a wide range of material while concentrating
on fundamentals; its problems manage to be both hard enough to
challenge and easy enough to solve, and there are enough of them to
keep the most avid busy.
ISBN4-87187-12-4
202

Elementary Go Series - Vol 3 - Tesuji

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Elementary Go Series - Vol 3 - Tesuji

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Elementary Go Series, Volume 3

Kiseido Publishing Company

Kiseido Publishing Company

All rights reserved according to international law. No part of

First Printing April 1975

So the White 2 we have been investigating in Dias. 4 to 7 turns out to be

Black 3 in Dia. 9 failed, but Black 3 in Dia. 10 succeeds. If White

Boldness may succeed where caution fails, so next Black tries

The Knight's-Move Tesuji.

The Slapping Tesuji.

The Clamping Tesuji.

Dia. 1. There may seem to be no way for White to capture anything in

Dia. 1. Black is in a position to capture the upper pair of white stones,

The Gross-Girt Tesuji.

Dia. 1. White 1 is a snap-back capturing move. It puts two black stones

The Throw-In Tesuji.

Problem 1. Black to play and capture the cutting stones.

The Squeeze Tesuji.

Answer to problem 1. Black 1 is the squeeze tesuji.

The Placement Tesuji

The following twelve problems review the techniques of this chapter

1.Black to play 2.Black to play 3. Black to play

Dia. 1. In this posion Black seems to be alive. To start with, he is

Answer to problem 4. A throw-in at 1 is the means to ko. Answer to

Dia. 1, White 1 begins a ko to capture the three black stones in the

Dia. 1. This corner position arises frequently. White's three stones

A two-stage ko is better for the player behind than a two-step ko,

Dia. 1. This is one example of what is called a thousand-year ko. Notice

A double ko is the ultimate variety of indirect ko. It is so indirect that

Dia. 1. This is a currently popular variation of the avalanche joseki.

The Best Ko.

In many positions ko can be reached in two different ways, and it is

Answer to problem 2. Black 1 and 3 cause a direct ko in which White

If Black played 4 at 9 in the answer diagram to problem 3 there

In the previous example the number of moves needed to capture each

Descent To the Edge.

The Two-Stone Edge Squeeze.

Dia. 1. If Black plays a and forces White to connect at 6, the white

The Belly Tesuji.

Dia. 1. How should White play in this position?

Dia. 2. If he goes straight up to the edge, then Black 2 causes a seki. In

A four- or five-space eye is not necessarily a living shape, but it

Two Hanes are Worth One Liberty

Dia. 1. This type of position turns up often enough to be worth knowing

Save the Ko for Last.

The Knight's-Move Tesuji.

The Clamping Tesuji.

Dia. 1. White is in no position to cut at a, so he had better lower his

Using Shortage of Liberties.

Sometimes a sacrifice is necessary to make the linkage go smoothly.

The Diagonal Tesuji.

The following problems involve variations and combinations of the

This section looks at some common shapes of stones to see which

Dia. 1. The one-point jump, of which Black 1 is an example, is the most

Dia. 6. A two-point jump from a two-stone wall is much stronger. In

Cutting Through the Knight's Move.

Dia. 1. White seems to be linked together with two knight's moves on

A few more miscellaneous splitting tesuji appear in these problems.

The Wedge Tesuji.

Dia. 1. There is a suspicious look to this medium-sized piece of white

The Belly Tesuji

The Placement Tesuji.

Dia. 1. This time Black's corner territory is the target. It looks